Terrible Research
by OukamiYasha
Summary: Ellis has become a victim of CEDA's experiments, and Nick's not sure if he'll ever be normal again. Hunter Ellis, Nick/Ellis slash.
1. Chapter 1

**YES, ANOTHER ONE. DON'T JUDGE ME!! Anyway, I posted this on the NickxEllis comm on LJ, but I thought I'd post it here too before I deleted the file from my computer (I always erase the first chapters, then write over it with the second chapters, etc, because I'm weird like that.)**

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After six long months in a CEDA internment camp, Nick was relatively ecstatic when uniformed employees had marched into his tent and proceeded to tell him it was time to be shipped out to a larger military outpost, where the survivors would be set to acclamating back into the real world.

Of course, Nick didn't need acclamating. He just needed to be free of this place and its antiseptic environment, free from all the soldiers and science nerds telling him what to do, when to do it, where to go, what to eat...he didn't like being told what to do, and this place was all command and no freedom.

Of course, Rochelle and Coach had told him to shut up and stop complaining about it, because sitting clean and safe in this place was a hell of a lot better than tripping over bloated corpses in a mosquito-infested bayou. Nick had eventually shut up as they recommended, but only because Ellis seemed to find his complaints funny and he was tired of the kid grinning and sniggering after every comment the gambler made.

What was worse, upon reaching the camp all those months ago, the kid had immediately volunteered for he and Nick to be bunkmates. Nick could have throttled him at the time, but he didn't, because it turned out that sharing a tent with Ellis meant free sex from a young, very good-looking and very exuberent partner. It also meant blankets shared without a second thought if Nick was cold, backrubs if he was tense, extra food from the mess hall squirreled away in the boy's coverall pockets if he was hungry.

And somehow, they had cobbled together a relationship, one that Ellis, despite all his redneckiness and Catholic upbringing, did nothing to hide. He was especially given to cupping Nick's face in his hands, running calloused fingertips across the dark stubble, and murmuring with those soft, plump lips "IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou," over and over again.

Nick thought about it a lot, and wondered if he loved Ellis back. But he was so messed up and selfish and angry at everything that he didn't quite know what love was anymore, and in the tender moments of the night when Ellis would murmur those words to him, Nick had nothing to say in return. He thought about it a lot, though, and could never quite convince himself that he _didn't _love Ellis.

And that was why, when they were unable to find Ellis before being removed from the camp, Nick became a little less ecstatic and a little more panicked.

"Where's the young'un?" Coach asked, turning to Rochelle and Nick while they were being herded toward an armored truck with a paltry handful of others. Rochelle, formerly lost in the sweet oblivion of being transported back into society, snapped back to attention at the notion of her somehow-adopted little brother not being among them.

"You don't think he's getting left behind, do you?" she asked nervously.

A few glances around and they agreed; Ellis really was nowhere in sight. Now that they were looking properly, Nick noted, there were quite a few people missing.

"I'll handle this," Nick huffed and pushed his way to the front, where he tapped on the shoulder of a gruff-looking soldier, "hey, is everyone being transported?"

"Yessir," the guy responded, and seemed content to leave it just at that. But that wasn't good enough for Nick.

"Well then, how about telling us where our friend is?"

"Friend?"

"Come on, you can't miss him. Redneck kid in his 20's, never shuts up? Always wears a goddamn baseball cap?"

Realization seemed to dawn on the soldier's face and he nodded, adjusting the strap of his weapon while they walked.

"The boy from Georgia? His name's Ellis, right?"

Nick grunted in the affirmative and the man nodded again.

"We shipped him out a few minutes earlier; had to get everyone on board the trucks as quick as we can. This group is only the second wave."

Nick scowled.

"Why the hell didn't you--" he paused, noting the soldier's hands gripping the weapon more tightly, and redirected the route of the conversation, "We're all heading toward the same place, though, right?"

"Yessir," the soldier answered and looked ahead, giving Nick the silent cue to stop talking. Nick frowned and stood still, waiting for Coach and Rochelle to catch up.

"Well?" Rochelle asked.

"They said he was shipped out in a different truck a few minutes ago. But it doesn't matter, we're all going to the same place...wish they'd have told us, though. Don't know what the hell they think they're doing."

"Aww, Nick," Rochelle gave Nick a sympathetic look and patted his shoulder, "it's so sweet that you're gonna miss your boyfriend that much. I can remember a time when you didn't wanna spend two seconds with that adorable little country-fried boy."

Nick ignored Rochelle's comment and Coach's deep chuckle and climbed in the back of the armored truck alongside them.

He was happy to be heading out.

But couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was wrong.

* * *

About forty minutes into the ride, he found that he couldn't quite afford to be thinking about Ellis.

An ear-splitting chorus of shrieks erupted from the world outside the truck, and before the survivors could snap their heads up in horror, the vehicle had stopped and was being rushed from all sides. It rocked too and fro among the screeches and screams and Nick felt far too defenseless and cursed the military for taking away their weapons.

Things didn't get any better as the ground began to shake and a huge dent appeared in the side of the truck, crushing the reinforced steal like it was a red plastic cup. The doors were ripped asunder and they found themselves staring into the horrifying face of a Tank, its maw wide and slobbering and its huge meaty fists groping for whoever, whatever, it could find.

Survivors screamed, poured out of the vehicle, ran in every direction. There were pops and rattles of gunfire, roars, the unearthly screeches of the zombies as they zeroed in on their pray.

"Stick together!" Coach yelled above the din.

_Hey, no problem there, _Nick thought, though he realized that now probably wasn't the time for his shit.

If Ellis had been there, he'd probably be whooping and hollering and beating off the Infected with his left shoe.

They ran through the commotion, over the bodies, past the raking claws and the gunfire. Rochelle managed to snatch up a machine gun from a fallen soldier and Coach had taken to punching the Infected out of the way with his bare fists.

Nick was, honestly, impressed.

They kept running and Rochelle covered their backs, blasting the Infected with a spray of bullets whenever they got too close.

They ran and panted and ran until they couldn't anymore.

It was like a nightmare all over again; the military had failed spectacularly in protecting their cargo, and Coach, Rochelle and Nick suddenly found themselves very alone in the middle of an overgrown forest.

"...well, _shit,_" Nick breathed heavily, leaning upon a tree for support.

"Agreed," Rochelle muttered, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her arm. She turned to Coach, her eyes both a little hopeful and a little hopeless, "Coach...what now? What do we do now? We were so close..." she choked a little but didn't cry, and instead gazed hard off into the distance, her mouth pursed, "at least Ellis is safe."

"Probably," Nick responded with a sick twist to his gut. Coach closed his eyes for several long moments, and when he opened them again, it was with a resolute sigh.

"The camp ain't too far away. We can probably follow the tracks back to it."

"Okay, yeah, sure. But is anyone gonna be there to help us?"

"Nicholas, don't you start with me. Wouldn't make sense for all of 'em to leave, anyhow, who'd tend to the camp? Gotta leave someone in charge."

"We were so close," Rochelle whispered through the darkness, her eyes still latched onto the hazy horizon.

Nick watched her, then watched the trees and their ruffling leaves, and suddenly they were walking again, silent and wary.

* * *

The camp had been overrun. Apparently the havoc wreaked on their convoy wasn't an isolated incident; it looked like a massive horde and a few more Tanks had gotten into the camp and laid waste to everything. As if to reiterate that hypothesis, a few common Infected shuffled around the grounds slowly, moaning and clutching their heads.

"Shit," Nick spat.

The morning sun bathed the scene in a strange, pink glow that bounced off the jagged metal, off torn construction and shillouheted the shambling monsters black against the sky. Tents lay in tatters upon the ground, their sad skins flapping in the breeze. Blood was purple in the pink light.

"Oh Lord..." Rochelle moaned, nearly dropping her gun; Coach took it from her gently and she rubbed her now-freed arms, "No, no, no, no...this is just too much. I can't...I just don't..." she sighed helplessly and sunk down to the ground, shaking her head. Coach handed Nick the gun and kneeled down beside her, a meaty hand on her back.

"Now baby girl, don't you give up just yet. The main building's still standin' here, gotta be some survivors. Come on, baby girl, get up. Ellis is waitin' for us, probably worried sick."

"I'm worried sick too," Nick said flatly, not watching as Coach lifted Rochelle up. He gestured with the gun toward the building; once an elementary school, it had long since doubled for a makeshift mess hall, hospital, file-keeping offices, and god knows what else, "In there."

Nick shot the few Infected who took notice of them and they made their way into the building.

"Helloooo?" Rochelle cupped her bruised hands around her mouth and called through the empty hallways, her voice bouncing off the white painted walls.

It was as if they were on the run of zombies all over again. And, Nick supposed, they probably were. There was no one to protect them, and no one to save them. Coach and Rochelle must have realized this too, because they were silent as they stalked through the halls, peeked through rooms, kicked through discarded instruments. They cut through the gym, a makeshift hospital, so jaded from the months before that they barely noticed the bodies strapped to gurneys, apparently forgotten by CEDA and ripped apart by maurauding zombies.

"Looks like CEDA ran..." Coach murmured, trailing a hand across the cool metal of an abandoned gurney, "and left all these poor souls to perish..."

"Are you surprised?" Nick snorted, but honestly didn't have enough fire in him to take the conversation any further. He was tired, he was distraught at losing their one hope...and he thought, just maybe, one of Ellis' stupid stories would be good for cheering them up right now. Especially Rochelle, from whom the hope seemed to drain out of as if someone had pulled a plug in her heart.

Nick longed to see that grinning, tanned face, the sparkling blue eyes. He actually _wanted _to hear that voice, wanted to hear the drawling words and the short, pleased chuckles.

"Hold up," Coach whispered, craning his head to the side, "y'all hear that?"

They stopped, silent and listening.

From somewhere deep inside the school came terrified screams.

"Holy shit, someone made it," Nick whispered under his breath. They set forward at a breakneck speed, worn shoes tapping the smooth hallway floors. The sounds grew louder with every step, and they skidded to a halt in front of a large set of doors, torn off their hinges by God-only-knows.

"Looks like a theater," Rochelle said softly. Above them the flourescent lights dimmed and flickered, and the trio gave the lit tubes a brief look before cautiously traipsing into the room.

It was all bright whites and glass, cages and cubicles. Not like any theater Nick had ever seen, but there was a good chance CEDA had totally renovated it to suit their purposes. And the purpose of this room was clear.

Test tubes, needles, beakers, all lay shattered on the floor. A line of hazmat suits stood against the nearest wall, ready to be donned by people who weren't there and would probably never be there again.

A laboratory.

Their ears stung with screams and cries and moans from blurred figures behind plate glass partitions and heavy steel doors.

"Oh God have mercy," Coach whispered, and they walked through the mess and the noise. The lights flickered again, the electricity hummed. They saw more gurneys, more people strapped down to them; some dead, some dying, some...Infected. Their burning eyes centered on the survivors, they gnashed their teeth so hard that enamel cracked and flew in white flecks, they struggled against their bonds and let out wails of misery when they couldn't get free.

"What do you think--" Rochelle started, when Coach let out an abrupt yell and hauled ass to the side.

"Lord'a'mercy! Judith!" he pressed his hands up against a heavy red door, all too similar to the safe room doors they had become so familiar with; except the security bar on this one was placed on the outside. The inner room past the door was dimly lit, but they could easily see her, brittle hands wrapped around the steel of the bars.

Judith had been a quick friend the minute they had arrived at the camp; a personable mother of two who had lost both her kids and a hundred pounds or so to the Infection. Not pretty enough for Nick's tastes, but she was always nice to him, and she seemed to have an affinity for treating Ellis as if he was one of her lost children.

Now she was even less beautiful, even more thin, her cheeks sunken and her skin dyed an unearthly shade of white.

"Judith, shit, what happened?!" Coach asked, undoing the bolt of the door to pull her out. She leaned her sparse frame against the man's heavy bulk and moaned softly.

"Awful..." she muttered, "just awful, what they did...made people turn...they _made _people turn! I saw it!"

"Oh, honey..." Rochelle put a hand to the woman's back. Nick simply watched, his eyes narrow and his fingers tight upon the weapon he held. Surely he couldn't be the only one to notice how unnaturally long Judith's fingers had gotten; or how the pigment seemed to have been stripped out of her formerly black hair. Now it was just gray and seemed to be lightening by the second.

"Then...they strapped me down and took this needle...oh Lord...this needle, and stuck it into my arm...oh Lord, what did they do?" she moved away from Coach, buried her face into her hands, and cried.

And sobbed.

And screamed. An unearthly scream that seemed to rend the very air in two, and she tore her face away from her now-monstrous hands and her eyes were orange coals, burning in the dim light. She lunged toward Coach, knocking the man flat on his back and stood over him, shrieking into his face, her fingers curled and ready.

Nick had to shoot her five times before she fell. She lay crumpled on top of Coach like a discarded paper crane. The older man paused, still shocked, and slowly pushed her off of him. Nick helped him to his feet.

Rochelle cried silently in the corner, and they stayed that way for quite a while.

"They been experimentin' on folks..." Coach leaned heavily against the wall, dragging a palm down his sweaty face, "Oh, Lord in heaven, please look over his woman..."

His muttered prayer was interrupted by a sharp, pained yell, one that the trio recognized far too well.

"Oh God," Nick felt cold all over and shoved the machine gun into Coach's hands before turning on heel and running to the back of the theater toward the noise. It continued, it was familiar, and it was close. Before he knew it, Rochelle, always the fastest, was ahead of him, with Coach slowly puffing along behind.

"Oh God! Ellis, sweetie!" Rochelle moaned as she reached the source.

And then Nick saw him; the boy was behind another one of those steel doors, laying prone on the floor. He rocked back and forth and moaned to himself, hands pressed hard against the sides of his head.

"El! Ellis, shit!" Nick tore open the safety bar and tossed it over his shoulder, charging through the doorway and landing on his knees in front of the kid. Ellis didn't even seem to notice, he just clenched his eyes and breathed slowly through his mouth, lips pursing with the air flow.

"Oh, sweetie, come here!" Rochelle was immediately next to Nick, pulling Ellis by his shoulders into her lap and stroking his hair, damp and dark with sweat.

"Jesus Christ...oh Lord in heaven..." Coach murmured behind them, his grip tight on the handle of Rochelle's gun.

"That soldier said...the military said..." Nick sputtered, looking wildly back at Coach, then to Rochelle and then, finally, at Ellis, "...they said he'd been sent out earlier!"

"They lied," Rochelle moaned softly, fingers still raking through Ellis' curly locks, "they lied."

"Come on, sport, come on," Nick pressed a hand to the hollow of Ellis' cheek, patting the clammy flesh gently, "come on."

Ellis opened his eyes slowly and gave a pained groan.

"Weeelll, sheee-it," he muttered softly, a grin stretching across his cracked lips. The corners of his mouth began to bleed, "I didn't think I'd ever see y'all again."

"Shit, son," Coach kneeled by them, completing their half-moon formation around the pale boy, "what the hell happened? What'd these fuckers do to you? What..." he trailed off, his voice cracking, because he already knew.

Ellis looked thoughtfully at the ceiling for a moment, pained tremors running through his body. He began slowly, then his voice picked up tempo and pitch until it was like listening to a breathless waltz.

"Yesterday...last night, maybe? I dunno, it's like...a blur or somethin'. Y'know, I was jes' kinda goofin' around and they told me they needed me in here an' I went an' they said I had to fix some machines an' then they grabbed me and put this cloth over my nose an' then, shit, everything was black and it hurt and it's been hurtin'--"

Rochelle smoothed a hand over his eyes and shushed him.

"It's all right, honey, we're here for you now. Baby, we're here."

Ellis offered another strained smile at her, then reached out and gingerly held Nick's hand.

"Missed the hell outta you, darlin'..." he breathed and smiled at Nick and squeezed his hand tightly.

Nick squeezed back, and noticed the ugly gray and yellow bruises above the indent of Ellis' arm. Dark bruises with black veins branching from them, and needle wounds like eyes in the centers.


	2. Chapter 2

**This is getting pretty darn depressing. Wow. But it'll get better!**

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"...so there was that, but did you know you can eat some animals while they're still alive? Like...this one time, my buddy Keith saw this guy eatin' a live squid on TV, so he thought he'd try it out. We went on this fishin' trip on the Gulf, an'..." Ellis had to draw a deep, shuddering breath before continuing his story, something about Dave catching a huge, pissed-off squid and Keith trying to eat it alive with a knife and fork.

Nick could barely hear what Ellis was saying, though he was trying hard to listen. He sat still, stroking Ellis' sweat-damp hair while the boy's head lay in his lap. Mostly Nick watched; watched the mechanic blabber on like nothing had happened, pausing every now and then to run his tongue over his cracked and bloody lips or flash Nick a pained grin.

Coach and Rochelle had long since left the small room and Nick could see them across the way, bickering and gesturing about something. He had a pretty good idea what it was about.

"--these suckers with, like, _hooks _or some shit on them. An' it started chokin' Keith with its tentacles and like, bitin' at his face with its beak, it was like something out of _Aliens _or some shit!"

The boy's skin was pale, hot to the touch. His eyes were fevered and bright.

"An' the damn thing jes' wouldn't come off, so me an' Dave started hackin' at it with this huge-ass fishin' knife..."

He paused a moment, his eyes narrowed slightly and his mouth slack in apparent confusion. He stared weakly at the ceiling, then at Nick.

"What was I talkin' about?"

Nick stared back. The confusion on Ellis' face was painful.

"Squid. Attacking your loser buddy."

He was expecting Ellis to bob his head in reply and blabber on some more after regaining his train of thought.

But instead, Ellis still had blank look on his face.

He couldn't remember.

"Oh well...I'll probably 'member the rest later. Oh, did I tell you 'bout this one time, Keith found this desert where they were, like testin' land mines and s--" he stopped in mid-sentence, his body tensing and his teeth gritting together. A violent hiss of pain escaped his lips, small tears prickling beneath his tightly closed eyelids.

"Ellis?" Nick gently patted Ellis' cheek, "You okay?"

"Hooollleee shit, Nick," the mechanic grumbled, keeping his eyes closed, "jes'...man, it ain't...I ain't never felt this bad in my life. Well..'cept fer...'cept fer this one time...when..." he suddenly flipped himself off Nick's lap, landing hard on his hands and knees and vomiting forth a thin stream of bile.

"Ellis, son!" Coach ran up alongside Rochelle, their concern evident, "boy, you okay?"

"Does he fucking _look _okay, Coach?!" Nick snapped, standing to his feet and shooting a smoldering glare at the older man.

Ellis collapsed at Nick's feet and rolled over to his side, moaning in pain and pressing his palms hard against the sides of his face. His skin was almost blue-gray now in its pallor.

And when had his fingernails become so long and jagged and black? His fingers looked like someone had slammed a door shut on them.

"Nick," Coach breathed softly, watching Ellis in morbid fascination, "we gotta lock him back up. That or--"

"Or _what_?! Fucking shoot him?!"

"Boys!" Rochelle moaned and shook her head in horror, tears rolling down her cheeks, "don't you say things like that around him! Don't you..."

Beneath them, Ellis cried and yelped and screamed in a keening, high voice that they'd never heard out of him before.

And Nick ran.

He ran despite the calls of his teammates, despite the fact that Ellis was rolling around on the cold floor in what was probably the last human agony he'd ever feel again.

He simply couldn't put up with it.

He ran as far away from the theater as he could, until it felt like his heart was going to explode. Then he sunk down onto the polished concrete floor and leaned his back against the wall, eyes shut tight and blood pounding in his ears.

Coach and Rochelle could deal with Ellis. Coach and Rochelle could take up that gun, put the boy out of his misery. Coach and Rochelle could effectively end Ellis' life with the knowledge that it was for the best, and that would outweigh any guilt they would feel. Coach and Rochelle could do it.

But Nick couldn't. He wouldn't. He wouldn't be there for the beginning of Ellis' transformation, and certainly wouldn't be there for the abrupt and bloody end.

The conman buried his face in his hands and both listened and tried not to listen at the same time. He heard nothing, he was too far away from the theater, but he imagined all sorts of things...yelling and crying and awful screams and...gunshots. And with each imaginary noise, his heart wrenched painfully in his chest because he knew, he _knew_, he had lost the boy, and would never get him back. This wasn't like one of the several times Ellis had gotten himself knocked off a bridge or pulled away by a Smoker; Nick couldn't pull him up or untangle him this time.

Nick couldn't do anything.

* * *

Minutes passed like hours and Nick didn't notice the bright yellow sunlight streaming in through the broken windows until he looked up.

It wasn't morning anymore. Or at least, not the delicate part of the morning where the sunlight was soft and hesitant. No, this was decisive sunlight, strong and proud and gleaming. He didn't know what time it was and didn't care. All he knew was that it must be over by now.

And he'd have to face it.

He lifted himself to his feet and stood still a moment, staring blankly ahead. His stomach gave an odd lurch and he began walking, slowly, the way he had come. The world was in sharp detail; Nick noticed every stray shard of glass, at his feet, every dust mote that floated like memories in and out of the light.

He made his way back to the theater...no...laboratory. The laboratory where sick scientists turned people into zombies, even though there were plenty of zombies to choose from already. Nick refused to believe Ellis would die somewhere as dainty and harmless as an elementary school theater; though he supposed, somehow, it fit.

He passed through the double doors and made his way to the very back. Rochelle and Coach sat on overturned file cabinets, staring at the ground silently. They didn't even look up when he approached.

They stayed like that for a while, silent and somber beneath the dimming lights and the humming electricity. With Ellis gone, Nick didn't think there'd be anyone to break the silence ever again.

But Coach proved him wrong.

"Nicholas...why did you leave?"

"Not sure," Nick admitted, surprised by the carelessness of his own voice. He cared. He cared a goddamn lot. But he had conditioned himself to act like he didn't, and damn, he had done a hell of a job.

"The boy _needed _you," Coach sighed and shook his head, because he expected that much out of Nick and shouldn't have been surprised, "Nick, come here."

He stood and Rochelle followed, and they stood in front of the red steel door that had held Ellis. Coach lifted the metal pipe that served as a lock and handed it back to Nick, who took it dully.

So they intended to punish him by showing him Ellis' dead body. He probably deserved it. Some sick part of him even wanted to see, to know know that it was really all over.

Coach shoved open the door.

Ellis lay, intact, seemingly asleep on the floor. There was no brain matter splattered on the walls, no chunks of flesh torn off his body by hot bullets. Hell, there wasn't even any blood.

Nick gawked.

"He's okay?"

He moved to approach the boy and his heart jumped into his throat when Ellis whipped his head up and shrieked, eyes blazing and handsome features twisted into the ugly snarl that they all knew too well. Coach and Rochelle were yelling something, but Nick couldn't hear anything other than shrill yelps and his own grunting, because the minute he saw that face, the_ Hunter's_ face, he began wailing upon the creature with the length of pipe, raining blow after blow down on its back and head, making it pay for turning Ellis, _his Ellis_, against him...

"Nick, goddammit, stop!" Rochelle pulled him back with a strength he hadn't known her to possess, and the pipe was ripped away from him by Coach, who brandished it in the air as if restraining himself from using it on Nick. Ellis regarded the pipe weakly, unmoving save for his tongue licking at some of the blood streaming down his face.

"Nick, what the hell you think you're doing!?"

"You didn't _kill _him?!" Nick cried desperately, staring at them with wild eyes, "you didn't...oh, goddammit, you were supposed to...Jesus!"

"We found some sedatives and needles so we sedated him!" Rochelle's eyes were scrunched up with worry and shining with tears yet again, "you didn't have to beat the shit out of him, Nick! He can't hurt us. He can't hurt us right now."

Nick turned to stare at the boy, who snarled weakly in response. Ellis jerked his legs and arms in an erratic effort to try and back away, and whined with the pain of the movement before giving up and laying still, curled up into a prone little ball on the floor.

"We just couldn't do it," Rochelle said quietly and Nick couldn't blame her, but at that moment he hated her for it.

"He's...not Ellis," Nick said softly. He felt a delicate hand on his arm and Rochelle was looking up at him.

"Nick, you have to look more closely," she murmured and pointed to Ellis, "he...turned, yeah, but he's not like the others. See, his eyes are fine...his skin's a little gray, but nothing like those things we're used to seeing."

Nick's eyes swept over Ellis. It was true, his skin looked unnatural, but there were hints of blush red mixed among the gray. And it was still human skin; uncorrupted and smooth when it should have been split and gnarled and angry.

"He ain't a hundred percent zombie, Nick," Coach said, putting a hand to the gambler's back, "musta been they gave him an incomplete strain...or maybe 'cuz he's immune, his body's fightin' it, I dunno, but he ain't all zombie."

"So...what now?"

"Now," Coach repeated, and shrugged, "now we get some goddamn rest because we all been through too much these past few hours. After that...well, let's just get some sleep first. Plenty of time to decide what we're gonna do."

"All the time in the world," Nick grumbled. They shuffled out of the cell, one by one, and secured the door again, locking the boy up again.

Nick had always joked that Ellis would end up being locked away due to mental illness. Now his jokes came back and stung him. Through the bars of the door, he saw Ellis laying still and silent, chest heaving with labored breaths like a dog who'd been hit by a car and left for dead on the side of the road.

"Come on, Nick," he heard Coach's voice and felt gentle hands pull him away.

* * *

Sleep had come quickly once they found a room suitable enough for it; Nick hadn't been expecting that. He had expected to be up for hours, hell, to never sleep again. But he had learned to be able to sleep through a lot. They all had.

It was dark outside when he woke; he could tell by the sunroof centered in the middle of the small room's ceiling. The school's electricity was stilll on; that was a good thing, at least. Near him, he saw the slumbering form of Coach, still and snoring on his pallet. On his other side, Rochelle sat on the edge of her cot, her face in her hands.

Nick was glad she was crying, because maybe she could cry enough for both of them. He watched her, and she must have known he was up, because she spoke in a trembling voice.

"It's just not fair...that poor, innocent little boy...that little angel...just a baby, Nick. Just a kid. How could they...would they still have done it, if they had _known_...?"

She didn't need to explain for Nick to understand. Would they still have done it if they had known Ellis? If they had known he'd give someone he just met the shirt off his back? If they had known how childlike and naïve and full of life he was? If they had known about the boy's plans, whispered plans in the quiet night about re-opening his auto shop and living with Nick and buying a puppy and naming it Black Jack, in honor of Nick's card fetish? Stupid plans...plans Nick never agreed to...but plans nonetheless.

Nick put an arm around Rochelle and, as he hoped, she cried for both of them.

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**As always, reviews are appreciated, and thanks for reading! Also, I'm working steadily on my other fics, so do not fear. **


	3. Chapter 3

**For some reason, I'm focusing much more on this fic than my others...I'll try to remedy that, but I can't make any promises. I'm a loser... u_u;**

**Also, just reminding you these are also available at the NickxEllis comm on LiveJournal. If you haven't joined already, I recommend it! There are a lot of great people on that site, tons of very talented authors and artists. **

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Coach, Rochelle and Nick sat in the mess hall at one of the long lunch tables, an odd mixture of guns, ammo, and food spread out in front of them. They had woken up alone, still no sign of the military, or anyone else, for that matter. So they woke in survival mode, foraging for whatever they could find to help them stay alive.

"There's runnin' water here, and enough food here to last us for a while," Coach noted as he shifted, eyeing the cans and packages as if afraid they might sprout legs and run, "at least long enough for the military to come back here."

"That's cute, Coach, but why the hell would they come back?"

"They gotta have some kinda communication between the camps, Nick. Soon they figure out somethin' happened here and they'll be on their way to find survivors."

"Because the military is so reliable," Nick snorted in response. Rochelle and Coach sighed audibly.

"It's the best we can do for now," Rochelle mumbled around a mouthful of granola, "...does anyone want to go see Ellis?"

"Yeah," Coach answered, picking up a heavy shotgun and a bottle of pills, "meant to check on him earlier. Nick?"

"We'll understand if you don't want to, Nick," Rochelle added quickly, dropping the granola bar wrapper on the table with a flick of her fingers.

"Whatever," he grumbled and pushed himself away from the table, almost forgetting to snatch up a gun before heading off toward the theater.

Rochelle immediately headed to the back of the room where Ellis was, while Coach and Nick attended to something they should have done earlier; dispatching of the poor souls who were still left alive, albeit Infected, in their cages and gurneys. Placing the pistol against their heads and pulling the trigger wasn't hard for Nick, even though he reasoned that it probably should have been. After all, he'd seen these people alive and well just days earlier. But detachment was the name of the game, and it was the game he played best.

He could hear Coach cursing softly over his shoulder in regards to more red-doored cells embedded within the walls.

"Shit, Nick, they done all sorts'a things here. We got a couple'a Smokers and a Boomer...maybe a Spitter too, I dunno, she's too fucked-up lookin' for me to tell..."

Nick approached to help the man but them out of their misery, but Coach shook his head.

"Dead already, Nick. They didn't last long."

Nick turned, nothing to say, and began walking to the back of the room. Coach finished off the last of the Infected and followed.

The racket coming from Ellis' cell was enormous. The growls raised the hairs on the back of Nick's neck and made his hands tense on his gun.

"Ellis..." Rochelle quickly peeked into the room through the bars and the boy gave a horrific yowl before lunging toward the door, his claws striking against the metal. Rochelle jumped backwards and gave a startled yelp as Ellis growled again, prowling in a hunched position and watching intently. He lunged again and fell, then spat, teeth bared, at the door, not understanding why it was keeping him between him and his prey.

The boy kept trying, though; leaping and bounding off the walls, screeching and howling in frustration when he couldn't get to the humans that lay just out of his reach.

"One of us should try talking to him," Rochelle suggested softly. Without waiting for anyone to volunteer, she slid cautiously up to the partition in the door, slipping her fingers around the bars, "Ellis, sweetie..."

She was cut off by a shriek and Ellis lunged again. Rochelle cursed loudly and fell away from the door as the boy's hands scrabbled through the bars, slashing the air wildly. Rochelle gave a muffled sound of pain and sucked one of her fingers, torn by his wild claws.

"Or maybe we oughtta let him be for a while," Coach said, putting his hands to Rochelle's hunched shoulders and leading her away, "let's find some goddamn first aid."

Nick followed without a glance back.

* * *

None of them could work up enough nerve to go back until two days later.

It was nighttime and Nick woke suddenly, huddled under his sparse blanket. He lay there for an hour or so, trying to stay warm and get back to sleep. Ultimately, he ended up just staring at the ceiling or the sleeping forms of his two teammates.

He imagined Ellis was laying beside him, a muscular tattooed arm wrapped around his waist. He could almost feel the breath on the back of his neck, hear the soft chuckles and the drawling voice.

"_Shit, Nick, yer freezin'. Why didn't you say somethin', I'da warmed you up if I'da known."_

"Mmh," Nick responded to no one. He closed his eyes, trying to feel calloused fingers tracing the ridge of his hip and the strong chest against his back. Of course, Nick's imagination had its limits, and he couldn't pretend he wasn't alone in the bed.

Alone and sleepless.

Sighing, he sat up, slinging his legs over the side of the cot until his bare feet were flat on the cold floor. He slipped on his shoes and jacket, slung the blanket over his shoulder, grabbed his gun, and snuck out.

He was glad the school seemed to be eternally lit; if there were any environmentalists left in the world, he was sure they'd pitch a fit if they knew, but he had had enough of wandering around in the dark with only a flashlight to guide him.

Nick was surprised to note the relative silence from Ellis' cell. He slunk up to the viewing window and peered in. Ellis lay curled up tightly in the far corner, and even in the spare light, Nick could see him trembling with the chill.

The gambler pursed his lips together in a thin line, lifted the bar of the door, and went in.

Ellis immediately snapped his head up and bared his teeth. He hopped to his hands and feet and Nick braced himself for the lunge, ready to knock the boy back, but the attack never came. Ellis was growling as loud as ever, and staring at Nick with something like fear. Curious, Nick lifted up the gun to see if that was what made the boy so wary. But his eyes were on something else.

The pipe.

Nick held it up experimentally and Ellis gave a shriek and backed up as far as he could, hunched and hissing like a cat.

"You're afraid of this thing?" Nick sliced it through the air and he could have sworn he saw Ellis wince. Nick would have laughed if he didn't feel so awful. Slowly, he backed away from the boy to give him room.

"Because I hit you with it. Is that why?" he continued and Ellis relaxed a little, scuttling forward aggressively as if to show he wasn't afraid. Nick held up the pipe in self defense and Ellis promptly stopped in his tracks, eyes trained on the length of metal, "Make a deal with you, kid. If you don't attack me, I won't attack you. Here...brought you something."

He tucked the pipe under his arm and grabbed the blanket with his now-free hand, tossing it over Ellis. Ellis fell onto his back with a scream and clawed wildly at the blanket until it was thouroughly shredded and he was free of its clutches.

Nick watched somberly and with bitter disappointment. It was stupid to get so upset over a blanket being shredded, he knew, but it was a gift. A goddamn gift. If he had given the mechanic that blanket just a few days earlier, he would have lit up and grinned and clutched it closely to him as if it was the most thoughtful gift in the world. But Nick was a few days too late, for a lot of things.

He slipped down to the ground, sitting cross legged, the gun by his side and the pipe laying flat in his lap.

"I gave that to you to keep you warm, you retard," he muttered, keeping his eyes on Ellis. Ellis looked up from sniffing the blanket, growled, prepared to lunge, then noticed the pipe and backed off. He snuffled the blanket and crawled under its blanket, peering out from underneath it at Nick as if the conman couldn't see him. Nick chuckled.

"Still as stupid as ever," he said, then immediately regretted it. Ellis wasn't stupid. Hadn't been, at least.

Crazy, yes.

Naïve, yes.

ADD, _hell_ yes.

But stupid, no. And Nick told him so with a deep breath.

"Sorry, Overalls. You're not stupid. You're...strange, but you're not stupid. I guess I always meant to tell you that but I never did...or if I did, I can't remember."

Nick was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of Ellis' stomach growling.

"Hungry?"

Ellis continued watching him from under the blanket. He breathed, deep and even, and whined softly. Nick thought it was kind of cute.

Until Ellis leapt out from under his cover and toward Nick, teeth bared and claws spread wide.

Nick was up in a second, the pipe connected with a dull thud and Ellis was sent sprawled across the room with a high yelp. He scrabbled to get up and backed away again, his breath ragged. Nick stood in the corner farthest away from him, heart beating furiously in his chest.

"Goddammit, Ellis, I'm not food! Jesus Christ!"

Ellis screamed back, threatened and hungry but too much aware of his own safety to attack again.

"Jesus," Nick repeated, digging into his suit pocket for a Nutri-Grain bar he had squirreled away earlier, "here. Food."

He tossed the bar down onto the floor in front of Ellis, who promptly pounced on it as if it were a rabbit and he a fox. He tore through the packaging, sending pieces of grain and fruit and plastic flying, then wolfed down the remainder in the span of a few seconds.

Well, no wonder. The last time Ellis had eaten was probably four days ago.

Leaving just the mauled wrapper behind, Ellis reared his head back and made a face of disgust, opening and closing his mouth to remove the taste of oatmeal and blueberry from his tongue. But despite the taste, he prowled around to lick up the little bits he missed, causing Nick to grimace.

"This floor probably hasn't been cleaned in ages. Guess you don't mind, though."

What diseases could the kid catch that were worse than the one he already had?

Ellis continued traipsing around the room on all fours, sniffing for more food. The scent trail led him up to the gambler and when they noticed their close proximity, they both leapt back with startled yells.

"Holy shit!" Nick grabbed his chest and groaned, "You're gonna give me a fucking heart attack, Ellis. I don't have any more food."

Ellis breathed loudly through his nose snuggled back under his blanket. He gathered up a scrap of it in his claws and dug his face into it, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. With something like a complacent growl, he glanced out from under the cover at Nick.

"In the morning," Nick said, picking up his gun and the pipe, "in the morning, I'll bring you more food."

He backed out of the room, too wary to turn his back on the boy, and closed the door, slipping the pipe back into its place. He watched Ellis for a while, and Ellis watched him back.

"I miss you, Ellis," he said softly, and could feel hot tears that he wouldn't permit himself to cry, "I miss you a whole goddamn lot."

Ellis didn't take his eyes off the man, even after he began to walk away.

* * *

"Nick, you coulda been killed."

Nick leaned against the chair, chewing absentmindedly on a rubbery waffle. He had expected the little speech from Coach. Honestly, he didn't even want to tell them he had gone into Ellis' room last night, but he was sure they'd notice the presence of Nick's blanket.

Besides, what did he care? Ellis was _his_ lover...ex-lover? It didn't seem right to think of him that way.

"Actually, Coach, I _was_ killed. What you see right now? A ghost. Ooooo," Nick waggled his fingers at the older man, who raised an eyebrow so high Nick thought it might shoot off of his forehead. Rochelle choked on her glass of water.

"Point is, Nick, we're all we got now," Coach continued, "Now, I'm not sayin' we should stop seein' the boy, but goin' alone is just downright foolhardy."

"But he's okay, Coach," Rochelle said. Nick mentally put Rochelle at the top of his best friends list, "You think he'll like Spaghetti-O's, Nick?" she plucked a can from the pile and inspected the expiration date.

"Probably. Loved them before, remember? Especially those stupid alphabet ones."

"These aren't alphabet, but they have meatballs," the woman noted. Nick shrugged.

"It's good enough. He definitely wanted some Nick meatballs last night."

Rochelle smiled coyly and sniggered and Nick promptly took her off his best friends list.

* * *

"El, look what we got for you," Nick held the can up to the bars and tipped it back and forth in his hand. Ellis watched them from the back of the room, still covered by Nick's ripped blanket. He gave them his usual growl of warning.

"Should we go in?" Rochelle asked. Coach shrugged.

"Nick went in alone last night and nothin' happened."

Nick took that as a cue and slipped the pipe from its hold. He retained a firm grip on it; that pipe, he knew, was the only thing that would keep them safe. The three slipped inside and shut the door behind them.

Ellis, not knowing what to do, arched his back and snarled. He was still incredibly wary of that pipe, skirting around Nick whenever the gambler got too close.

"Overalls, food," he held out the can for Ellis to inspect. Ellis, his heightened senses smelling what was contained inside the can, cautiously came forward, obviously still hungry.

"Good boy!" Rochelle cooed and the boy snapped his head up to stare at her. Nick rolled his eyes.

"He's not a dog, Ro."

"I know," she responded quickly, embarrassed.

"Just give the boy his food, Nick," Coach sighed heavily, "no use in tauntin' him."

"I think I know what I'm doing," he snapped back, "you said he's not all Hunter, and that means he's still Ellis, somewhere. So he should be able to trust us. Just gotta remind him."

He stretched his arm out further. Ellis paused for a moment, then took the steps necessary to reach him, sniffing the can. Then, like lightning, he took the can into his mouth, hurled it into the wall behind him, the pounced on it before it had time to hit the floor. Razor sharp claws tore open the metal and he began scarfing down the insides, his mouth covered with bright orange sauce and tiny pieces of noodle.

"Okay, that's a little gross," Rochelle said.

"Hope the boy don't hurt himself. Them edges look sharp."

"Don't think he cares, Coach," Nick said, but he was pleased. Ellis had been less than an inch away from him, and hadn't attacked.

It showed much-needed promise.

* * *

Against the warnings of Coach and his own better judgment, Nick went back to see Ellis that night, when the world outside was dark and stagnant and made the interior of the school burn in its everlasting light. He slipped through the door and sat against the wall next to it, holding the pipe so he was sure Ellis could see.

Ellis gave a slight growl and paced against the back wall.

"Relax. You'll like this," he said and pulled out a crumpled plastic bag half-full of stale Fruit Loops. He opened it and tossed one Ellis' way. The boy leapt in an impressive display and caught it between his teeth, ready for another bite the second he hit the ground.

Nick chuckled and couldn't help but remember all the times Ellis would try and catch food in his mouth. The kid was awful at it, and it used to make Nick so angry that the boy would waste food when there was barely any to be found. But when food was finally available, when they were safe and okay, he found he liked watching Ellis bob back and forth with his head tilted back and his mouth wide open, ready to catch the little morsels. It provided slight amusement in an otherwise unamusing place.

And a couple of times, Ellis had flicked pieces of food at Nick in an effort to get him to participate. He never did, and snapped at the boy for it, and now he regretted not humoring him when he had the chance.

He regretted a lot of things.

"Want another?" he asked, fishing a handful of cereal from the bag. He knew the taste probably didn't appeal to the mechanic, but food was food and Ellis, even in this state, knew it.

Ellis made a strange noise deep inside his throat and opened his mouth. Nick paused for a moment, then took a piece of cereal and flicked it toward him. Ellis caught it again, expertly. Apparently becoming a zombie improved your hand-eye coordination, something that Nick certainly never would have expected.

They kept on for an hour or so. Nick was expecting to go through the whole bag of cereal, but Ellis lost interest before reaching that point. Nick kept trying to throw the little frosted circles at Ellis' mouth, but the boy didn't care to be involved anymore, and the bits of cereal just bounced off his head. Ellis regarded the stray pieces, unimpressed, on the floor.

He wiggled underneath the blanket, curled up in his customary little ball and watching Nick as he always did.

"Miss your hat, Overalls? Is that why you keep hiding under that thing?"

Ellis snorted.

"Yeah. Well, I miss it too. Somehow, you look even more like an idiot without it."

Nick wondered vaguely why he had to continue putting on such a tough front for a guy who didn't even understand him.

He briefly considered leaving the rest of the cereal in the room, but decided against it; Ellis knew Nick to be the bearer of food, and that was one of the things that kept him safe.

Nick closed the door and locked it, then glanced at Ellis.

"If I bring you another blanket tomorrow, will you rip that one up too?"

Ellis made another strange noise and retreated further under the cover until his face was hidden.

Nick took that as his cue to leave.


	4. Chapter 4

**Thank you everyone for your comments! I've gotten a lot of great ones so far, you guys are awesome! This chapter is pretty short but I wanted to let everyone know I'm not dead, just very busy (I graduate college in five days...wow...). But this fic has a long way to go before it's finished, so there's lots more to come.**

**Also, Murder Junkie asked if Ellis would lose his eyesight since the general consensus is that Hunters are blind/have no eyes. And I wasn't planning on it, in this fic Ellis' body is fighting the strain that he was infected with, so he has very mild mutations. For instance, his eyesight might not be as good as usual (kind of like me with my glasses off!) but he won't go completely blind. Unless I decide to torture him some more. =D**

**If anyone has any more questions, let me know! And I'll have the next chapter up as soon as I can!**

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"He stinks," Nick remarked as they stood in front of the door, watching the boy lap at a dish of water.

"It's not.._.too_ bad."

"It's goddamn awful, Ro."

"Well...all right, yeah, he smells to high heaven. But what're we supposed to do? Give him a bath or something?"

Nick offered the other two a glance, his eyes raised, and immediately they knew what he was thinking. Coach just shook his head and held his palms up in defiance.

"No way, Nick. Ain't no way. That's just crazy."

Nick rolled his eyes. Not that he could blame the guy. Giving a bath to a crazed, well- muscled ex-mechanic with sharpened teeth and claws...well, it didn't seem like the greatest of ideas.

"Noted, but we can't just leave him to run around filthy like that. And I'm not going to resign him to just being some kind of animal," Nick remarked sourly, causing the others to turn toward him in awe. He glanced back, annoyed, "_What_?"

"Sorry, Nick, we're just not used to you...oh, how should I put this..."

"Expressin' your feelin's," Coach stated. Rochelle bobbed her head in agreement.

"Or even _having_ feelings, for that matter," she joked.

Nick felt his mouth curve into a deep frown and crossed his arms. He was on the verge of saying something cynical; instead he caught himself and sighed.

"Well, I'm _not_ giving up. I mean...let's face it, if he were a _normal_ Hunter, he'd have torn us to shreds by now, after all the times we go into that room."

"All the times _you_ go into that room," Coach corrected, though not without a hint of pride in his voice. The older man had never been too fond of Nick, but he had been exceptionally cordial the past few days after seeing the way Nick cared for the afflicted boy.

"Whatever. The point is, I think we're gonna have to treat him like a goddamn human being if we want the old Ellis back."

"Nick, treating someone like a human being?" Rochelle's pink lips curved upwards into a coy smirk.

"Ha ha ha. Well, are you two in or not? Because I can do this myself."

He couldn't, and they all knew it.

* * *

"Hey, El," Nick slipped into the cell, the other two following close behind him. Ellis looked up at them; lately he'd been giving a small growl whenever they entered or got too close, but it usually evaporated into sounds of curious sniffing as he investigated what they brought him.

And today it was something good.

"Hungry? Bet you are," Nick goaded, holding a Slim Jim out to Ellis. The boy sniffed, licked his lips, and made to pounce before Nick drew back, the dried meat high in the air, "Ah ah ah. No jumping. C'mere."

He dropped his hand again, waggling the Slim Jim at Ellis, who gave it a skeptical glance and approached slowly. Coach and Rochelle were beside him; Nick could feel the tension in their tired bodies. Behind her back, Rochelle held a needle filled with clear liquid tranquilizer; her thumb stood ready and trembling on the plunger.

Ellis eased forward, mouth snapping open and shut at the food. Nick tossed it in front of him and Ellis pounced on it.

And they pounced on him.

Ellis yelped and snarled, thrashing around wildly to snap and claw at them, but months of running and fighting had made them fast and agile; they leapt back and the syringe remained dangling by its needle from the skin of Ellis' thick arm, its plunger sunken and its contents delivered. Ellis squirmed about wildly, the Slim Jim forgotten on the floor beneath him. He whipped around to snarl at the trio, wanting to attack but not knowing which one to go for. He backed away from them and used his teeth to rip out the syringe, spitting it to the side in the corner and continuing his warning growls.

"It's all right, El...calm down..." Nick said softly, watching as the boy's eyelids drooped and his body began to sway. Ellis gave a tired shriek, slunk forward on all fours, then decided better of it and crawled back. He listed to the side and his shoulder hit the wall before sinking down to the cold concrete floor. There he breathed heavily, watching his former teammates through lidded eyes.

"You did good, El," Nick reached out a tentative hand to smooth down the dirty curls of the boy's hair. Ellis tried to reach a tired claw but only got it an inch off the ground before it fell back, limp.

Coach rolled in a loading dolly they had found tipped over in one of the storage rooms, and together he and Nick picked the boy up and deposited him on it as Rochelle watched, still trembling from the adrenaline of the encounter. Coach then took hold of the steering bar in his big hands and they rolled Ellis out the theater and down the hall.

Showers and baths didn't usually come standard at an elementary school, so either CEDA or the military had built an add-on room at the flank of the school, maze like in construction, with private showers set close together. Near the back of the add-on, a couple of rooms contained baths for those who had been too injured to stand in a shower; the baths largely went unused, however. In their experience, people that hurt never tended to last long.

They gently lay Ellis on the tile floor of the roomiest shower they could find, then stood, looking at him, then at each other. Then, with a clap to Nick's shoulder, Coach spoke.

"Well, Nick, get to cleanin' your boy."

"What? Me?"

"Well yeah, we figured you'd be the one to wash 'im."

"That's funny," Nick answered, though he really found nothing funny about it, "because I was actually expecting it to be Rochelle's job."

"Why me?" she huffed indignantly. Nick stuffed his hands into his pockets and muttered something about motherly duties.

"Nick, she ain't seen the boy naked before and I doubt she wants to now. You, though, you have. Undressin' him won't be a big problem, he's knocked out."

"Why don't you do it, Coach? You're the strongest of us."

"Boy..." Coach stepped forward, a finger raised in warning.

"All right!" Rochelle gave a loud sigh and held her hands up, separating the two men, "how about this? Nick, you and I will give Ellis his little shower, and Coach, you can stand out here and make sure nothing's coming. I mean, hey, there may still be some zombies running around here."

Coach couldn't help but shoot Nick a triumphant smile before turning away, eyes trained on the entryway and gun secure in his hands. Nick grumbled to himself and stepped with Rochelle past the gaudy plastic curtain and into the shower. Slowly, he kneeled and began to peel off the layers of Ellis' clothes. The boy was thoroughly drugged; even as Nick liberated him of his clothes, his eyes remained shut, his mouth slack and drooling.

Rochelle stood over them, making a marked effort to look away by studying the patterns on the ceiling.

"What," Nick asked as he noticed, irritated, "You've seen a naked guy before, right?"

"Of course!" she responded, an affronted look on her face, "Just...I mean, this is different. It's Ellis."

"How is that different? Besides, there's not much of him you haven't seen. He'd strip off his shirt and pants at a moment's notice. Remember?"

"Especially if you were around," she smirked. He decided to ignore that and stepped back to the shower's threshold, turning the water on in a thin stream.

The water never did get very hot even when the camp was running correctly, and when it did it took several minutes. They all agreed that time couldn't be wasted here, waiting for warm water or otherwise. So they had been taking cold showers and baths and Ellis would have to suffer through it as well.

Ellis yelped and groaned under the assault of the freezing spray, but still didn't open his eyes.

"You did good, Rochelle. Drugging him, I mean," Nick complimented and passed Rochelle an old, half-empty shampoo bottle and a torn washcloth. With a sigh, she uncapped it and poured the shampoo over the length of Ellis' body while shielding herself from the water.

"I don't know how I got roped up into this," she muttered, then leaned down despite the water and smoothed the washcloth over Ellis' body. She was tentative, hesitant. She wasn't afraid of Ellis right now; he wouldn't be getting up any time soon. But having her hands all over the naked boy beneath her, no matter how innocent the situation was, didn't feel right. Especially with Nick there.

Ellis was Nick's. The mechanic had let them all know that early on. The boy hadn't been clingy, in fact, public displays of affection embarrassed him. It had all been in the eyes, in the smile. He'd turn his blue gaze toward the unruffled conman and just watch and grin and anyone with half a brain could _feel _the adoration he felt for the older man.

Rochelle knew Ellis had loved them all in different ways. He had loved her as if she was an older sister, and she had loved him like he was her little brother. He had loved Coach like a father, a mentor, someone he could talk about The Midnight Riders and Jimmy Gibbs Jr. with.

And he had loved Nick like nothing or no one else.

Rochelle finished scrubbing him and stood, letting the water do the rest of the work for her. She looked to the side at Nick.

The man stood to the far side of the shower, one arm wound around his waist and the other pressed flat and hard against his face, palm and fingers covering up his eyes and nose and some of the wrinkles and scars on his forehead. She saw his mouth work slightly as if he was chewing on the insides of his cheeks, saw his adam's apple bob as he tried to swallow his sadness away.

And she knew it wasn't working.

* * *

From then on, Rochelle volunteered to wash Ellis. Nick and Coach would help with the sedation, the transportation and the sentry duties, but ridding the boy of filth was all her job. She could tell it had pained Nick to see the formerly bright and vibrant Ellis lying naked and helpless on a tile floor while someone washed him. And she cared for Nick despite his bad attitude and didn't want him to suffer more than he already had.

Today she had him in one of the tubs. Nick and Coach had given each other looks when Rochelle had remarked she'd be giving Ellis a bath today.

"Everyone likes a nice bath every now and then. And this way I won't get soaked," she had remarked simply and marched into the back room to fill up the tub. She had run the water cold, as usual, and currently Ellis was instinctively curled in a ball against the chill in the far end. He watched her wring out the tattered washcloth and bared his teeth when her hands flitted to close to him.

Rochelle was a bit worried. They'd been running out of tranquilizers and had been having to use smaller and smaller doses on the boy. As a result, Ellis was awake and wary during these events, though he couldn't quite coordinate his movements enough to do any real damage.

Sometimes Rochelle wondered why they were still trying.

And then she wondered how Nick must've felt.

Sighing, she lathered up the shampoo in Ellis' hair, her fingers sliding through the soapy curls. He growled, then exhausted by the simple effort, leaned against the side of the tub and closed his eyes tiredly.

"I know, sweetie, I know," she poured a cup of water over his head to rid him of the suds. He whined weakly and tried to turn away, but had nowhere to go.

He looked human, in that instant. His eyes were closed tightly, the wet lashes long against the smooth curves of his cheekbones. His expression was pained but calm, and he hunched over like a teenager with bad posture. She brushed a few long curls out of his eyes, mentally noting that she needed to give him a haircut.

He looked human. He _was _human. Maybe they'd just have to remind him of that.

She turned on the hot water tap, waiting long moments for it to heat up. Eventually the water ran warm and Ellis opened his eyes and looked at the faucet. There was a type of wide fascination in his eyes that reminded her of the old Ellis, and that gave her more hope.

The boy scooted forward near the stream of warm water and curled up in the warm section of the tub, purring contentedly. Rochelle laughed and ran a hand through his hair and he didn't even seem to mind, so lost in the feeling of warmth and comfort that whatever madness in him had disappeared for a moment.

"Nick!" she called over her shoulder, "Nick, come here!"

The man wasted no time in rushing in, eyes wide and alarmed.

"What? What is it?"

"Relax, it's all right. I just wanted you to see Ellis. Look at how cute he is!" she pointed toward him with a grin. Nick watched the boy for a minute and looked back at her.

"Yeah, so? He's always curled up like that."

"No, look. I turned the warm water on and he went to curl up in it. It's cute," she insisted with a nod of the head. Nick studied her critically.

"You're wasting the goddamn hot water."

He turned around and stepped out, leaving Rochelle staring after him. Beside her, Ellis lay his chin on the sleek edge of the tub.

He was staring at the doorway. More upset than afraid, the woman lifted a hand and set it cupped to the back of Ellis' head, over the springs of wet hair. Ellis closed his eyes in a slow and sad way, and Rochelle could have sworn she felt him lean back into her palm.

* * *

**So yeah, really short. And I know it was kind of Rochelle-centric, but...I like Rochelle...soooo yeah. Anyway. Next chapter should be longer and contain more Nellis!**


	5. Chapter 5

**So sleeepyyy...but I thought I'd go ahead and post this because I'll be busy this weekend with graduation stuff. Thank you all for the great reviews, it really makes me feel good to know people appreciate the effort! **

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Nick sat alone on a box in the theater-turned-laboratory, staring down the empty gurneys with their brown and bloody sheets. The bodies of those left behind had long since been carried outside and disposed of by he and Coach, just another morbid chore in the daily life of a survivor. And just as it had before being saved, before being secure and protected in a camp, faces ran together until all Nick saw were glowing eyes and bloody mouths, until soon he was seeing them even when there were no zombies around. Normally it helped to look at his teammates, to see they were still there with him and they were still healthy, still human. But now one wasn't healthy or human, and he could tell the other two, like himself, were becoming hopeless and haggard.

They were running out of food. They'd begun rationing what they ate, staring in contrition at empty boxes and wrappers as they chewed. What didn't help was that a good bit of food went toward Ellis to keep him happy and relatively tame.

Nick glanced over toward the red steel door, and heard the happy snuffling of Ellis inside. The boy was freshly bathed, dressed in his old clothes that Rochelle had washed in a tub. He was currently dining on the contents of a can of Spam. Nick felt Spam was something to be avoided whether human or zombie, but Ellis didn't seem too discerning.

And Nick. Nick was just bitter at the irony of it all. Because only minutes after he had made that heartfelt speech about getting Ellis back to normal, only minutes after he had opened himself up and allowed Coach and Rochelle to see that damn it, he _did_ care about the little redneck, he had promptly lost the will to keep trying.

It didn't take long for Nick to lose interest in something. Give up, move on. That's what he had always lived by, and now he could feel it setting in again. Ellis wasn't Ellis, and it hadn't taken long for him to realize it. He was, truly, a monster, sick with madness and anger and so many other afflictions the real Ellis never had.

Coach seemed to agree with Nick in that silent way that doesn't need explaining. He was just as amiable to Ellis as always, even going so far as to be the first to offer up his food to the boy (much to Nick's surprise) but the many sad shakes of his head indicated that he too felt Ellis was just too far gone. Rochelle was in perhaps an even worse situation of still thinking she could change the boy. Nick couldn't blame her. After all, she had taken him in as part of her family, someone to be cared for and babied.

Sometimes Nick wondered if he wasn't upset enough about the whole situation. But detachment was one thing he did well, a self-defense mechanism learned from childhood.

Some things were hard to change.

He eyed the polished metal equipment tray beside him. One more vial of tranquilizer sat on the edge. The last tiny vial they had been able to find.

Nick had to let Ellis go.

* * *

"Two boxes of cereal, a can of pineapple, one more thing of Spam, two granola bars..."Rochelle sighed, sitting on her knees in the larder and shifting through their remaining food, "It'll probably last us...what? A week, if we're really careful?"

Coach raised an eyebrow at her and she sighed in defeat. They had been expecting the military to show up before they ran out of food, or at least the appearance of a shipment vehicle bringing in new supplies. But they hadn't seen another human in weeks.

"You're right, we'd be lucky to last that long. And Ellis would need to eat too," she tossed a granola bar back into the pile.

"We gonna have to move on, girl. I was hopin' the military would be here by now, but we ain't got time to wait for them no more. Not with our food runnin' out like it is. Besides, maybe it's a blessin' that they never showed up. I don't reckon we'd be able to save the boy from them..."

A pained look crossed Rochelle's face as she stood.

"But how are we going to take him with us? There's no way...and even if there were, what would happen when we got to civilization? It'd be like delivering him back to CEDA for more experiments. Or the soldiers would just shoot him on sight."

"I tell you what, baby girl, you don't bother about that right now. We'll just cross that bridge when we get to it, okay? That boy's gonna be fine, just fine," he gave her a fatherly squeeze of the shoulder and stepped out of the larder, "Where'd Nick get to?"

"He's back in the lab again. I'm getting worried about him."

"I'm _always_ worried about him. Ever since the day we met."

"Yeah," Rochelle laughed, "but there's a difference between being worried he'll kill us in our sleep and being worried that he's depressed."

She stopped there as the double doors of the kitchen opened and Nick stalked in, hands shoved into his pockets.

"Speak of the devil," Coach called, "how's Ellis?"

"Gone."

"What? What do you mean _gone_?" Rochelle asked, her voice rising in a panic, "Oh my God, don't tell me something happened to him!"

"He escaped," he answered blankly. Coach and Rochelle blanched.

"_Escaped_?"

"Bull_shit!_ How's the boy s'posed to escape with that big ole lock in the way?"

"I went inside and didn't lock it back in time."

It almost felt good to slip back into his old habit of lying. Though Nick himself wasn't sure why he felt he had to lie, why he couldn't just tell them the truth; he'd drugged Ellis and carted him outside, past the fence and into the woods, where he'd left him. But the lie let him take less responsibility. If the slumbering Ellis were torn apart by zombies then Nick wouldn't be able to take the blame. At least, the blame of Coach and Rochelle.

"Shit! You mean he could be free inside the school?" the woman put her hands to her head and groaned.

"I saw him jump through a window," Nick closed his eyes wearily, sighing, "he's not here anymore. He's gone...he's gone."

"Should we look around?" Rochelle promptly moved her arms to glance wildly at the two men, "I'm going to go look around."

Coach's big hand stopped her.

"Ro, listen. Think about what we was just talkin' about. Maybe it's better this way. Maybe this way, Ellis...he won't be killed or hurt. We couldn't keep him forever. Not if we wanted to keep on survivin'."

Nick watched as the woman bit her lip and nodded and agreed before excusing herself and walking briskly out the kitchen, trying to keep them from seeing the tears running down her cheeks. What Coach said was true. If they wanted to survive, to truly survive as humans in a functional society, they couldn't be weighed down with a monster that only vaguely resembled the visage of their former teammate.

Still, despite the good reasons, despite lying to himself and his friends, Nick felt fatigue in his mind and sickness in his heart.

Because he knew Ellis would never have left any of _them_ behind.

* * *

Two more days found them practically without food. Even without Ellis' added consumption, the resources went by quickly. They took advantage of the little remaining energy they had by filling bottles with water and stocking up medical supplies and ammunition for the journey they knew they'd have to make.

It'd be a lot more difficult this time around, with only three. And there was an unspoken uneasiness between them. Why use the effort to try and find CEDA when the organization had done such awful things to people? What if CEDA tried the same with them? Nick certainly didn't fancy the thought of turning into a filthy zombie. It didn't help that they'd been unable to find a single intact vehicle in this place. It looked like when the camp had been overrun, the employees really had made a break for it.

"Another bottle filled," Coach wiped an arm across his heavy brow. They were outside in the heat of midday, at a tap that boasted a good supply of fresh, cool drinking water.

"You think we'll be able to carry all these?" Nick asked cynically. Coach shrugged.

"Till we have to drop 'em. You want water, don't you, Nick?"

Nick didn't respond, he figured his glare was answer enough.

"Boys, now don't-" Rochelle started, but her voice was drowned out by the hum of a motor. They looked from their chore, just in time to see a gleaming vehicle crash through the compound gates, skidding to an abrupt halt just in front of them.

It was a large, violently yellow vehicle, something that looked like a cross between a Hummer and a monster truck, and certainly looked like it'd been in a rally or two. It had suffered huge dents in its sides and cracks to the windshield, with dried blood and gore streaked over the front.

They all stood stunned, even as the doors were pushed open and the passengers stepped out. It'd been a long time since they'd seen any other survivors.

And these three were certainly survivors in the truest sense of the word. They were huge, strapping men, taller than Coach and wide with muscle.

"Look what we got here, boys!" the driver, a big redheaded man wearing a cap, spat on the ground.

"Haven't seen many people around hereabouts," a large-jawed man garbed in a solider's uniform said, heavy hands placed on his hips.

"Well shit," Coach wiped a hand on his shirt to clean it, offering it to the driver, "it's been ages since we seen any other people!"

The man grinned, took firm hold of Coach's hand, then in the blink of an eye yanked him forward and kneed him hard in the gut. Coach let out a soundless grunt and kneeled forward, stunned and gasping for the air that had been knocked out of him.

Nick whipped his pistol out of its holster but immediately found himself staring down the thin barrel of a sniper rifle. The guy behind it bared his broken teeth in a smug leer.

"Drop it," he barked. Nick shot him the coldest glare he could muster, which in no way seemed to affect the snaggletoothed man, and tossed the pistol to the dusty ground before raising his palms.

"You got food and guns, old man?" the driver shook Coach by his collar. The ex-football player gave the man a look of pure animosity, then hurled his bulk forward and tackled the redhead onto the ground. Rochelle acted quickly, darting out from behind Nick and snatching up the conman's discarded pistol.

But the redheaded man was just too strong, and had delivered a swift kick to Coach's head that knocked him flat and bleeding on the ground. The man with the heavy jaw grabbed Nick's arms and held them behind his back, while the sniper struck Rochelle hard across the cheek with his gun, sending her sprawling onto the ground and the pistol skidding out of her reach.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" once finished with Coach, the driver kneeled down to Rochelle, placing his jeaned thighs on either side of her hips, "My name's Buck. Figured I should tell you because you're gonna wanna be screamin' it soon."

"You son of a-" Nick snarled and was rewarded by a painful twist of his arms. Rochelle yelled as the man started pulling at her shirt, clawing desperately at him only to have her thin wrists gripped in his large hands.

"Buck, save some for me," Nick smelled the acrid breath of the man behind him as he spoke over the gambler's shoulder.

"Only after I-"

But they never found out what Buck was going to do, because an unearthly shriek cut through the air and, in a blur of tan and blue, he was lying several feet away, blood spilling from his abdomen and intestines strewn across the ground. He gaped at his open wound, pawing in disbelief at the slimy coils protruding from his body.

Above him, Ellis stood hunched, claws rigid and ready. He snapped his head up and screamed like Nick had never heard a Hunter or a human scream before; a primordial noise of raw anger, hate, panic, worry, all reverberating through the air and making it shudder and churn.

"Shit!" the man immediatley let go of Nick, backing off as quick as his stumbling feet would let him, "Hunter! Shoot that thing, shoot it!"

Snaggletooth, panicked, raised his gun and shot twice, just as Ellis was leaping toward him. The shots hit Ellis in the right shoulder but it wasn't enough to stop him; he landed heavily, raking his claws in a wild move that rid the sniper of his gun and several of his fingers. Ellis continued clawing, talons digging deep into the man's chest, sprays of blood shooting through the air.

The one in soldier's clothes scrambled back to the Hummer, but the boy saw him and shot off of the now-dead sniper and onto the hood of the vehicle, letting loose a tremendous shriek right into the man's face. The man screamed back in terror and ran, tripping over his own legs and landing behind the vehicle, out of sight. Ellis jumped over the top of the car and on top of the man, and a two sets of shrieks rang in unison through the air.

Nick and Rochelle helped Coach up, Rochelle holding a torn portion of her shirt to the bleeding wound on Coach's head, and then they watched. All they could see of the man from behind the car were his legs, kicking and twitching, and an ever-growing puddle of blood seeping into the dry dirt around them. Soon the legs stopped moving and the air grew silent once more.

The three stood still and staring, each terrified to move and unaware that they were holding onto the other for support.

Ellis hopped back onto the top of the car, the front of his body red and gleaming with wet blood. He crawled forth, favoring his right arm, until he rested on the hood, and growled at them.

"Oh God," Rochelle's knees buckled and Nick held her up to keep her from fainting. Coach wasn't much better, he was dazed from the kicks to his stomach and head.

"Ellis," Nick whispered, watching the boy and expecting any minute to be pounced. But instead, Ellis turned and crawled to the side of the car, slipping like a snake through the open driver's side window. Through the windshield, Nick could see him snuffling and rooting through the Hummer until he found what he was looking for. He emerged with a can of ravioli clamped firmly into his mouth and hopped down to the ground before tearing open the top and enjoying his spoils.

Nick watched, because that's all he could think of to do. He couldn't move, his legs were rooted firmly in place as if made of concrete. The whole thing had happened so fast. If it weren't for Ellis, he and Coach would probably be dead by now and Rochelle would be suffering through something perhaps even worse. But seeing the boy literally rip apart three huge men with such ease...it didn't make Nick want to go over and thank him.

"It's the boy...?" Coach muttered dazedly, blood obscuring the vision in one eye.

"Yeah," Nick answered softly. Ellis looked up at the sound of Nick's voice, his face red with blood and marinara.

"Oh God," Rochelle repeated, and Nick could feel her fighting the urge to vomit. Ellis looked back to the ground and pawed at the empty can for a moment, then slowly turned and limped back to the Hummer, crawling under it and curling up in the dirt like a dog escaping the heat. He tucked his claws under his head and closed his eyes tightly.

Nick watched a few more moments before ushering Coach and Rochelle back inside. They all sat at a long cafeteria bench, and Nick bandaged up Coach's wound as Rochelle sat shaking at the end of the table.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered, firmly wrapping the bandage around Coach's head, "Jesus Christ. Can you believe that shit? Goddamn."

"Shit, I wasn't no help at all," Coach groaned as Nick finished, casting a look over at the trembling Rochelle, "I'm sorry, Ro, I'm real sorry."

"It's all right," she offered a troubled smile, rubbing her arms with flat palms, "those guys were huge...bigger than you. You couldn't have done anything."

"Guess the boy's been hangin' around, huh?" Coach asked earnestly, eager for a change of subject.

"Maybe he wanted more food," Nick remarked sullenly, plopping down beside Coach with a weary sigh.

"Well, he found it, didn't he?" Rochelle asked, "in that car. Maybe there's more. We should...probably go back out there and look."

"Ellis is out there," Coach pointed out. Nick shoot his head.

"He's not gonna hurt us. If he wanted to, he would have after taking out those three pricks."

The other two agreed with what Nick felt was weary reluctance, and after a considerable amount of time catching their breath and rebuilding their nerve, they headed back outside to the Hummer.

The sun was making its journey to the horizon line and the evening was cooling off, but Ellis was still curled up under the vehicle, his back turned to them. He lifted his head and growled slightly as they approached, but was quick to lay it back down, passive and still. Cautiously, they opened the doors to the Hummer and rooted through the contents.

Rochelle was right. There were bags of food, enough to get them by for another two weeks or so. There were also a few clips of ammunition, a little drinking water and a plethora of magazines Nick planned on keeping, but made Rochelle blush and roll her eyes. They piled the supplies on the ground outside, careful to avoid the mangled bodies, which had already begun to stink and draw flies. And still Ellis didn't move.

Nick wondered if maybe Ellis had been seriously injured. Usually, he'd be interested in any activity his human compatriots took, no matter how minimal it was, traipsing forward on all fours and tilting his head at each noise and movement. He had been a curious zombie, just as he had been a curious human. Nick still couldn't forget the time Ellis had paused during one of their frantic runs for the safe room to inspect the corpse of a Smoker, poking with disgusted delight at the bloated tumors before being pummeled into the opposing wall by a Charger. It was that kind of curiosity that made Ellis so annoying and so endearing.

Nick crouched down, peering under the car. Ellis lay on his left side, and Nick could see visible exit wounds on his back from where the bullets had pierced him. Blood, his own blood, stained the back of his shirt.

"Is he okay?" Rochelle hunkered down beside Nick.

"I dunno, he was shot. Looks like he's been bleeding pretty heavily."

She gave Nick a look.

"We can't just leave him here to bleed out, Nick. Not after what he did."

The gambler, for all his desperation to be rid of Ellis and the pain that came along with him, couldn't help but agree.

Getting Ellis inside was a difficult task. He was quite unenthusiastic about the whole thing, even when Nick wagged a hearty strip of beef jerky at him to get him to crawl out from under the Hummer. It took some cooing and goading but he eventually obliged, dragging himself out and snapping half-heartedly at the meat. Nick stepped back toward the building, urging Ellis to follow. The boy gave him a frustrated look or two, and paused often, but in twenty or thirty minutes time, they had him sitting on top of one of the cafeteria benches. He was tired and injured and weak, so him managing to attack them didn't seem likely.

Nick pulled off the boy's shirt, grimacing at the blood-stiffened material. Rochelle followed up, dabbing at Ellis' wounds with antiseptic. The southerner hissed and arched his back, but was otherwise placid. Coach advanced with the bandages, wrapping Ellis' shoulder and arm gently.

"That should do you, boy," he stepped back after giving Ellis a light pat on the arm.

"You don't think he lost too much blood, do you?" Rochelle twisted her thin fingers together, "he looks a little pale."

"He's a goddamn zombie, of course he looks pale," Nick retorted, a thick eyebrow raised. Ellis gave an impressive yawn and looked from Nick to Rochelle to Coach, before opening his mouth again and beginning to utter an impressive amount of unintelligible yaps and growls. The other three narrowed confused eyes at the odd behavior. Ellis just continued with the noises, mouth working up and down quickly, pausing every few seconds for his tongue to dart out and lick his dry lips.

"What the hell's he doin'?" Coach asked warily. Nick studied him for a few more minutes before it dawned on him and he burst into uncharacteristic laughter.

"He's fucking _talking_! Just listen, he won't goddam shut up, just like before!"

Nick ignored the looks of the other two and just continued laughing. It was just like Ellis. The kid was probably trying to brag about how he had taken out those three guys, asking if he looked cool doing it.

And Ellis, though feeble and deranged as he was, stopped growling in the face of Nick's laughter and peered up at him, his lips pulled back and teeth bared in what Nick knew was a grin.


	6. Chapter 6

**As always, thank you guys for your reviews! I've gotten some great ones so far, you guys are awesome! :D **

**Things get a little steamy in this chapter, I hope I pulled it off okay. I, for one, am a big fan of Hunter Ellis doing naughty things, but I'm not sure what that says about me...**

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* * *

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From then on, Ellis came and went as he pleased. It was clear that they were in no danger from him (though the safety of any future passerby couldn't be guaranteed) and so the days of tranquilizers and locked steel doors were behind him, behind them all. Instead, Ellis bounded free around the school and its outlying areas, sometimes sticking beside his former teammates, but more often than not, wandering off on his own.

He'd become especially fond of climbing up onto school's roof, and sometimes, when the sun was sinking and the sky orange, Nick could see the boy's form, black and still, hunched like a gargoyle on the eaves. Watching, Nick presumed, for any more danger like the kind that had arrived in the Hummer that day.

But the unexpected attack had brought along blessings, the foremost being their re-established closeness with their former teammate. The second blessing was the abundance of food they'd found in the vehicle. The third blessing came in glass bottles; alcohol, and lots of it. They had found it stashed in the back, cases of beer, vodka and rum. Coach had let out a triumphant whoop and hauled out a large glass of Smirnoff, with Ellis at his side, sniffing and pawing at the gleaming bottle in curiosity.

Of course, common sense dictated it was never a good idea to get drunk in the middle of the apocalypse, but they felt safe within the confines of the school, and hadn't seen a single zombie (Ellis aside) in weeks.

So one midnight two days or so after the attack found Coach, Rochelle and Nick gathered at their favorite spot in the cafeteria, completely shitfaced and loving every second of it. Coach belted out lines from a Midnight Riders song in his mighty voice while Nick and Rochelle held their stomachs and laughed until they hurt. Ellis sat on the plastic tabletop, watching restlessly. He caught a whiff of the beer Rochelle was drinking and leaned forward, snapping at the rim of the bottle.

"Hey!" Rochelle jerked back in an exaggerated motion, almost falling off of the stool in surprise. Nick sniggered.

"Aw, let Overalls have some, it ain't gonna hurt him," he slung his free hand forward to rub Ellis' back. Ellis briefly closed his eyes and let out a content sigh at the touch.

Coach gave Nick a half-wary eye that seemed to imply he wasn't all for the suggestion, but he was much too drunk to follow up on it. Instead he started on another Midnight Riders song in between sour mouthfuls of vodka from a plastic cup.

Rochelle stood, unsteady, and grabbed a shallow bowl from another table before setting it down in front of Ellis. She then took hold of the rum bottle and poured a good bit in the dish. Ellis slunk forward, sniffing at the strange liquid before practically diving in and lapping it up. The other three watched and chuckled and felt a little guilty; the whole thing was akin to giving alcohol to your dog during a party to see if it'd get drunk. But Ellis seemed to love it and finished the first bowlful quickly, whining and growling at Rochelle to give him more. And she couldn't help but oblige, as drunk as she was and as much as she cared for him.

What seemed like hours, but couldn't have been more than one or two, passed, and Coach had since fallen asleep, his head resting on his heavy arms and Rochelle, though tired, refused to go to bed and opted to stay in the cafeteria, insistent that something might happen to Coach if he were left alone. Nick shrugged.

"All right, but I'm sleeping in a goddamn bed," he stood, one last beer in his hand, and tried to walk as composed as he could to the doorway. Ellis sprung off the table and followed, bounding alongside him in unsteady pounces. Rochelle grumbled something and slumped down across from Coach, resting her own head on the table.

Nick led Ellis out the double doors and into the hallway, toward the room they'd all been sharing. His vision was blurry and he was having trouble walking, but Ellis seemed to be doing worse. His coordination was way off, and once or twice he lost his footing after a jump and fell in a tangle of limbs on the linoleum floor. Nick just snorted and grinned and helped him up, and Ellis looked at him with those still-human eyes, bleary and indignant but grateful.

And at last they made it to the room. Nick sat down heavily on his cot, watching the boy come in after him. Ellis swayed and blinked heavy-lidded eyes, almost colliding into the wall before falling down on his side with an abrupt yelp. Nick laughed and his vision swam with the effort; he lounged back against his pillow as Ellis made to get up. Nick continued his chuckling, almost-empty bottle loose in his hand, and Ellis schlepped forward carefully, head tilted to the side.

Whenever Nick laughed was whenever Ellis took the most interest in him. He'd stay by the conman's side, speak in his strange little growls, or simply bare his teeth in an effort to grin, and the thought that Ellis might still be Ellis made Nick happier than he'd been in some time.

"Hey, El," he slurred, setting a heavy hand down on Ellis' head as the boy rested his chin on the edge of the cot, "hey, c'mere."

He moved his hand and patted the edge of the cot, scooting over as far as he could to allow Ellis on. Ellis needed no further encouragement; he hopped up on the mattress and proceeded to spread himself over Nick, despite the room the gambler had made for him. Nick rolled his eyes and took another sip.

"That's just like you. Try to give us both a little room and you close the distance like there's no such thing as fucking personal space," he tilted the bottle toward Ellis, who gave the top a lick. Nick put his free arm around Ellis, rubbing the boy's strong back. Ellis stuck his tongue down the neck of the bottle and Nick pulled it away a little too hard, accidentally sending it crashing onto the floor. They both glanced to the side at the spilled beer in contrition.

"It was almost empty anyway," Nick sighed, and Ellis leaned forward to lick the fond taste of beer off Nick's lips. Nick laughed again and Ellis, fueled by the noise and the alcohol, snuggled in closer to the older man, nipping at his bottom lip. Nick brought his hands to Ellis' face and rubbed the pale cheeks with the pads of his thumbs, murmuring, "you remember kissing, El?"

He leaned forward and planted a gentle, drunken kiss on Ellis' lips. Ellis didn't seem to remember, but enjoyed the action nevertheless; he purred and brought his hands up to Nick's shoulders, gently digging his claws against the clothed flesh in short, timed pulses, like a cat would do. Nick kissed him again, enjoying the familiar feel of the southerner's plump lips against his own. Ellis licked at Nick's lips again and squirmed slightly, sinking into him.

Nick smiled, and gave the boy's hair a loving stroke before he shut his eyelids and began to let sleep take him over. Ellis was warm and heavy and comforting against him, and only dimly did Nick register the small sounds Ellis was making, the increasing writhes of the boy's body against his own.

And before long, his eyes snapped open because he finally realized that Ellis was rutting against him, panting and hissing as their crotches rubbed together through their clothing. His claws gripped Nick's shoulders tightly, his eyes shut and his pale face tinged with red as he moved, pure instinct and inebriation.

"Shit...El," Nick made to push him away but Ellis wouldn't have it. He increased the pressure of his hips against Nick's, forcing he older man's legs apart with his powerful thighs. Nick gave an unwilling moan at the contact, Ellis' erection evident against his own hardening length.

Nick was sober enough to realize that he was being dry-humped by a zombie, but just drunk enough not to put and end to it. The warm pleasure pounding through his body made it even more difficult to be concerned, especially when Ellis' pace quickened and he gave a groan of ecstasy that was like the ones Nick had heard so many times before. Nick moaned and arched his back, hooking a leg around the boy's waist and pressing against him until they were a single entity, moving in time, hot and sweaty and gripping at each other like nothing mattered anymore.

And maybe it didn't.

Their actions were fast and hot and reckless and animalistic. Ellis grunted and growled with each powerful thrust and Nick murmured his name, seeing black and white stars exploding through closed eyelids. He climaxed hard soon after, with a soundless and prolonged gasp. Ellis gave a few more swift slams between Nick's spread thighs and came with a keening whimper that sent chills through Nick's spent body. Ellis then collapsed on top of Nick, settling into a deep, long purr that Nick had never heard before.

Nick wrapped his arms around Ellis and, as the aftershocks of orgasm gradually wore off, fell asleep with the boy still atop him.

* * *

Morning found Nick with a sharp headache and only a dim remembrance of what had happened the night before. The minute he opened his eyes he regretted that he had. Hell, he regretted the fact that he actually had eyes. And then seeing the sleeping Ellis on top of him made him remember, oh so slightly, the warmth and the pants and the thrusts of the night before, and he groaned audibly.

"Shit...shit, shit, shit," he shook Ellis' shoulder gently, not wanting to abruptly wake the boy for fear he might attack, "Ellis, get up. C'mon, Ellis, we gotta get cleaned up."

Ellis lifted his head and blinked blearily at Nick. Then, ignoring the persistent hand on his arm, tucked his face back into the crook of Nick's shoulder.

"Very cute, Ellis, but we gotta get up," he pushed harder and Ellis grumpily relented, growling softly and lurching off the bed and onto the floor. He made to leave, crawling toward the doorway on all fours, when Nick stopped him with a loud reprimand, "Ah! No, don't leave. I don't want Ro to be cleaning you or something when she discovers you've come in your fucking pants."

He quickly grabbed a rag and a half-empty bottle of water from the corner and beckoned Ellis back over to him. Ellis, understanding, slunk toward him, his head tilted in curiosity.

Nick knelt down to Ellis' level, working at the knot of his coveralls.

"Can't believe you kept these damn things, they're at least two times too big for you," he muttered as he yanked the sturdy material down. He doused the rag with a little water and wiped at the boy's crotch. Ellis yelped and tried to leap back but Nick held him in place with a firm hand to his arm; truthfully, Nick knew Ellis was stronger than him, always had been, but he counted heavily on the boy simply not wanting to be away from him. And it worked, now as always.

In fact, it only took a second before Ellis seemed to enjoy the ministrations, leaning in closer to Nick and settling into that deep purr again. Nick immediately stopped, much to Ellis' displeasure, and pulled the boy's pants back up, re-tying the knot.

"Sorry kid, but we won't be repeating whatever happened last night. I'm all for progressive love and all, but something about human/zombie relations is a bit...unnatural."

Nick pulled down his own pants and underwear afterward, grimacing at the stains on the cloth and dried flecks of semen glued to his skin. He poured the rest of the water on the rag and tossed the empty bottle aside, doing his best to clean his underwear and himself. Ellis watched curiously and tried to edge in closer to get a good look, but Nick swatted him away. He wasn't too keen on having a mouth full of razor sharp teeth near his favorite organ.

When he was done, he pulled his pants back up, buttoned them, and gave a heavy sigh.

"Mention this to no one," he warned, half-teasing because he knew the boy couldn't talk about it even if he wanted to.

Nick made his way to the cafeteria, Ellis springing alongside him, and opened the doors to find Coach still slumped against the table and Rochelle sitting on the windowsill ledge, chewing ruefully at a dried apricot.

"You guys feel as awesome as I do right now?" Nick asked sarcastically, sitting down and pressing his palms hard against his temples to alleviate the pain. Coach groaned, his voice muffled by his arms, and Rochelle closed her eyes tightly.

"Oh Nick, don't talk...you're just making it worse..."

"Ouch," Nick grumbled from in between his hands. Ellis hopped up on the table, poking at Nick's untidy hair with his claws. Nick swatted his hands away, "stop."

Ellis snorted, gave his shoulders a quick roll, then hopped off the table and scampered out the cracked double doors. Coach spoke up, voice slow and cracking.

"We ain't never..._never,_ doin' that shit again."

Nick was in too much pain to laugh.

* * *

After the drunken escapade they'd shared, Ellis spent most of his time right alongside Nick, whereas before he'd been content to be left to his own devices. Thankfully, Coach and Rochelle didn't seem to questioning of these new circumstances. They seemed to have reasoned that Ellis, whether human or zombie, would always love Nick and want to be around him.

Ellis started following him around, nipping playfully at his heels or taking the hems of Nick's pants between his teeth and tugging on them like a dog playing man-of-war. He'd even begun trying to communicate regularly; when Ellis was around, Nick could expect to hear the garbled growls that Ellis seemed to think were perfectly acceptable English words. Between Ellis' new enthusiasm and Nick's gambler patience, they'd begun to slowly rehabilitate the boy. In only a matter of a few days, Ellis knew his name, though any attempt to speak it would result in a barely-understandable "Aaahlissk". Still, he was doing well, and Nick couldn't believe he'd ever doubted the mechanic's propensity to recover.

Ellis had also grown much more affectionate. That night seemed to have reminded him that yes, there was such a thing as sex, yes, it felt amazing, and yes, he and Nick used to indulge quite a bit.

This new revelation offered several awkward situations in the form of Ellis jumping Nick whenever he could. Luckily, he'd been able to push Ellis away before the southerner had been able to hump him in front of Coach and Rochelle. It was strange and embarrassing, like owning a dog that was entirely too amorous toward visitors.

"Look," Nick said one night, having dragged Ellis into the closest room he found find; the theater, "you can't keep doing that. You're a zombie, Ellis. A zombie."

"Ahlisk!" Ellis hissed proudly, and if Nick didn't know better he could have sworn there was a smug little smirk on the boy's face.

"Yes, you can say your name. I know. Good job. Just stop trying to bone me, okay?"

He sat down on a box and laced his fingers together. Ellis stalked forward and leaned against Nick's thigh, prompting the gambler to place a calloused hand on Ellis' head.

"It makes me feel weird, all right? Like a pervert. I mean, you're hardly in your right mind. You're sick and rabid and..."

"Ahlisk."

Nick looked at Ellis, hard and shrewd.

Sick and rabid and...Ellis. He was still Ellis. While everyone else had their doubts, the boy still knew who he was.

So their intial care of him hadn't been in vain. And there _was _still hope; Rochelle had seemed to think so, through all this, and now even the man in question was affirming the question that weighed constantly on Nick's mind. He was still Ellis. He'd get better. And he'd stay by Nick and love him as desperately as he had before.

All this and more was evident on the boy's face.

"Fair enough, killer," Nick stroked the side of Ellis' cheek, trailing fingers down to the boy's chin, "but we're still not sleeping together."

Ellis dipped his head and licked at the pads of the conman's fingers. He was slow and deliberate, noticeably un-zombie-like, and Nick watched him, only vaguely aware of the pleasure flooding through his body with each dab of Ellis' tongue.

"You gotta stop that," he said suddenly and drew his hand away. Ellis paid it no mind and crawled into Nick's lap, purring and leaning against him.

"Ellis..." Nick warned, hands to the boy's shoulders. Ellis simply bared his teeth playfully and leaned hard into Nick, causing them both to tumble off the backless box and hard onto the floor. Nick groaned, rubbing the back of his head. Ellis sat, triumphant, on top of him, kneading at the man's chest with his claws.

"Ugh...kid, you are..." he started, but trailed off as something caught his eye.

Underneath the bottom shelf of a nearby supply cart were the familiar dusty blues and whites of Ellis' cap. Slowly, Nick reached out and pulled it from under the cart, and held it up to the boy's face.

Ellis sniffed at it, his eyes wide. He pawed at it, still not quite educated enough to know what to do with it, so Nick set it firmly on top of Ellis' head. Ellis rolled his eyeballs up as far as they could go to catch sight of the brim over his forehead, then looked back at Nick.

Ellis seemed more complete with that cap, both physically and mentally. He reached up to drag the tips of his claws along the material of the cap, then set his hand back down on Nick's chest, firm and feeling of the strong heartbeat that pounded just below the surface.

"Ahlisk," he growled, and Nick nodded in agreement.

"Ellis."


	7. Chapter 7

**You guys thought I'd given up, huh? FALSE! I've just been having a few personal issues lately, that's all. I definitely plan on continuing this fic, and Savannah City Sweets. I'm even coming up with a new one-shot for the Nick/Ellis Summer contest on DA. Soo...enjoy!**

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It was past midnight when the building's electricity gave a powerful hum then simply cut out. Nick paused immediately; he hadn't been able to sleep, so he'd been walking the hallways, with Ellis, as usual, tagging along. Now they stood in the pitch-black darkness, motionless, confused, and alone.

"Ellis?" Nick asked softly. He was rewarded with a hiss by his side and felt the boy's shoulder brushing against his leg. With a groan, Nick hunkered down to the floor, ignoring his popping joints and placing a hand on Ellis' head as his eyes waited to become accustomed to the murkiness.

"Shit," he whispered to himself, feeling the rough brim of Ellis' hat beneath his fingertips, "I'm sure this won't be good."

Ellis snorted beneath him, inert under Nick's hand. It was a good sign. If danger skulked nearby, Ellis would be anxious and bristling. But the boy just sat against Nick, waiting patiently for whenever the older man felt ready to move. Eventually the darkness peeled back slightly and Nick could see with dim vagueness the outlines of the walls and the detritus littering the floor. As he stood, he mentally cursed himself; if he had been traveling with one of the flashlight-equipped guns like he should have, he wouldn't be stranded here, feeling vulnerable and alone.

But he wasn't alone, not truly. Ellis reminded him in the form of a soft growl. With a grim smirk, Nick cautiously ventured back toward their room.

Coach and Rochelle were up and waiting.

"I guess when you've been sleeping in the light for so long and it suddenly cuts out, it's kind of a shock," Rochelle shrugged in way of explanation as they sat in a small circle on the floor.

"What do you think it means?"

"Generator, or whatever was powerin' this place, finally gave out," Coach said with a heavy sigh, and he added a "damn" under his breath for good measure.

"Maybe a Tank smashed it," Rochelle grumbled in atypical pessimism, her hands twisting nervously around a half-empty bottle of water.

"No, Ellis would have heard it and raised hell," Nick noted, rubbing Ellis' back. The boy sat on his haunches and lifted his head like a proud watchdog, "damn thing probably just blew. It was only a matter of time, I mean, no one's been doing maintenance on it. At least I sure as hell haven't."

They sat in their little circle, restless and quiet. It seemed that not even Ellis felt like making his usual pseudo-conversation in growls and hisses. Finally, Coach spoke again.

"I think this is a sign, y'all. I don't think we should stay here anymore. I reckon we oughta leave, like we was plannin' on the other day. I mean...we gotta face it, ain't no one comin' to save our asses. Besides, the food we got from them hoodlums ain't gonna last forever."

"But it's _safe _here," Rochelle mumbled in a quiet, desperate voice.

"You think so?" Nick snorted, "Because it didn't seem too safe here when we were being beaten by those redneck jackasses."

Rochelle didn't bother looking up to glare at him, opting instead to make a simple, sad humming noise. Coach cleared his throat before speaking again.

"I think we oughta go look for that base they was gonna transport us to. That's our best bet."

"Yeah," Nick pushed Ellis away as the boy tried to gnaw at his shirt, "if we can find it. And what if that place has gone to hell like this one? And what're we gonna do with the kid?"

"We'll figure that out on the way, Nick. I just don't have a good feelin' about stayin' here anymore. Just don't feel right. Y'all can't tell me you don't feel the same."

The other two were silent. Nick couldn't speak for Rochelle, but the second those lights had gone out, his blood had run cold. He already felt uneasy about the whole place since the incident with the men.

The gambler didn't like the idea of leaving any more than he liked the idea of staying. He wasn't looking forward to the constant run, the scrounging for food and water, the knowledge that anywhere, at anytime, they could be ambushed by a horde...or worse. The race for survival was a constant hell on earth, no matter how much they tried to alive the stress with sarcastic quips or, as had been the case with Ellis, suspiciously fantastical stories about a long-lost buddy named Keith.

"We can't stay here forever," Nick finally agreed. Rochelle dipped her head in a reluctant nod.

Ellis hopped onto one of the beds and turned in a circle before finally curling up, as if he deemed the matter settled.

* * *

"This thing has a nice bit of gas in it," Coach murmured appreciatively as the Hummer's engine roared awake with a twist of the key. He and Rochelle sat in the front, while Nick chose to confine himself to the backseat, amidst Ellis and a few stray supplies. As Coach put the Hummer into gear and trundled through the ruins of the compound gate, Ellis was already beginning to get on Nick's nerves.

The boy was beside himself with what must have been excitement, hopping from the seat to the floorboards, back up to the seat, crawling close to Nick, backing off and twisting around to stare at the passing landscape, his blackened claws pressed firm against the grimy window.

"How's Ellis doing back there?" Rochelle curved in her seat to look back at them.

"I think he's about to have a fit. Oof!" Nick grunted when Ellis leapt onto his lap, knees jabbing against Nick's thighs as the boy watched the trees pass with amazement, "Ellis! Off!"

Rochelle giggled and Ellis leapt back to his seat, fingernails scrabbling at the window and mouth working, as usual, a mile a minute, speaking in excited growls.

"Oh, he's just having fun. Ellis always did love cars."

"Don't remind me. Grease monkey."

Rochelle turned back around with an amused snort and Nick crossed his arms, glancing toward Ellis once again.

In the excitement, Ellis had tilted his hat so far back that it was in danger of falling off of his head. Nick sighed in aggravation and moved forward to fix it, but Ellis beat him to it, moving both hands up to his head, in a very human gesture, to right the cap itself. Nick was stunned. Ellis, however, didn't seem to think any more of it, and promptly began to chew at the leather seats.

* * *

The roads were clear and long and must have lead somewhere, but the survivors agreed that they must made several stops in order to get their bearings and to ward off the occasional insanity that came from too-long road trips. Not to mention Coach griped that it was hard to drive with Ellis bouncing all over the car. So evening saw them at a long-abandoned, garishly tacky welcome station on the state line of Oklahoma.

Coach had parked the Hummer under the eaves of the rest area to keep a close eye on it and they were now in the lobby area, Rochelle inspecting an overturned water dispenser and Coach looking through a pamphlet that unfolded into a large map of the state. Nick cautiously inspected the perimeter of the lobby, a Magnum in each hand, while Ellis leapt from the chairs to the counter tops, eager to stretch his legs after the drive.

"Smell any zombies, Ellis?" Nick turned toward the boy as he made a spectacular dive and landed on top of an overturned vending machine. Ellis just tilted his head as if thinking over a curious puzzle, then gave a playful snarl and darted off to attack a rather harmless stand of newspapers. With a roll of the eyes, Nick continued to check for danger.

He was in the farthest corner of the room when he saw it out of the corner of his eye; a long green arm disappearing behind an open door, and the familiar trail of spores and smoke that followed it.

It was fast but the gambler had become more than enough of a match for lone Special Infected; he stole quickly around the corner, into the Employees Only backroom, and saw the Smoker shuffling in reverse, its sickly yellow eye trained upon him. Before it could so much as twitch, Nick raised his arms and pumped three shots from each gun into the zombie.

It collapse to the floor with a wheeze, leaving a puff of pulpy green haze where it had been standing. Satisfied, Nick exited to the lobby to find Coach and Rochelle running toward him.

"Just a Smoker. I got him," he said, and with relieved expressions, the other two went on about their business.

Twilight fell fast on the welcome station, the orange light of the sky shining through the broken glass and glancing off the stained walls.

"When I went to Florida," Nick mused as he prodded a useless coffee pot, "they didn't have coffee, but they had these little machines that dispensed more orange juice than a sensible person would know what to do with."

"I'm surprised you ever stepped foot into a welcome station, Nick," Coach said, a corner of his mouth upturned as he snacked on a stale Snickers bar, "don't seem up to your standards, do it?"

"Had to, the car I hijacked broke down," Nick answered flatly, wondering if they'd be asking him questions about the truth of this statement. They had long since learned to ignore him, however, and Rochelle continued perusing one of the maps Coach had laid out.

"Boys, I'm afraid I have no clue where that CEDA base could be. I mean, we passed the place where our convoy got attacked, that was our only real stepping-off point...so now what? Says on this map there's a military base in a city called Norman...doesn't look _too _far away from here..."

"Then we'll head there and just keep checkin' the radio for signals," Coach said, finishing off the unfortunate Snickers and beginning to unwrap a Heath bar, "just gotta keep goin' and check our information. That's the best we can do. We'll find our way, baby girl, don't you worry."

"I know," she sighed, "but you know how hard it is to be patient during a zombie apocalypse."

"Don't we all?" Nick scratched absently at his jawline, feeling the rough stubble underneath his fingernails. Nick usually preferred to be clean-shaven, but living conditions lately hadn't been exactly accommodating to his preferences. Ellis had loved his stubble, anyhow, always running rough palms over the planes of Nick's face, leaning forward to kiss and peck at his cheeks and jaw, whispering what Nick would consider sweet nothings, so the blunt hair would grate at the mechanic's soft lips and the boy would give a shudder of delight that ran through his whole body.

Nick ran his fingertips slowly over the skin of his own cheeks, remembering, until Rochelle interrupted.

"Where's Ellis?"

"Dunno...I reckon we should keep him close, though, we don't know this area," Coach stood and the two followed in unison.

"Ellis!" Rochelle cupped her hands to her mouth, "Sweetie, where'd you run off to?"

But there was no answer, not even when Nick called his name.

"Well damn, where'd that boy run off t-" Coach paused and held up a large palm in a gesture for silence before craning his head forward, "Y'all hear that?"

A shambling noise, so small it might have been imagined, came from the backroom. They moved together, in a tight group, toward the source, and rounded the corner.

Ellis was huddled, crouched as usual on all fours, near the Smoker that Nick had taken out earlier.

The Smoker was still alive, half-sitting half-laying with its back slumped against the wall, its single milky eye watching Ellis as if with weary resignation. Its gargantuan neck tumor had burst with the gunshots and now leaked a viscous yellow liquid down the front of the Infected's already-stained shirt. The smell was horrific.

"Ellis, get away from that thing!" Nick raised one of his Magnums again, jerking his head to the side in a signal for Ellis to move. But Ellis didn't seem to hear him. Instead he leaned in close to the Smoker and gave a friendly growl, his head tilted in habitual curiosity.

Coach, Rochelle and Nick gradually lowered their weapons as the half-dead Smoker made an odd gurgling noise around the large mass of its tongue. Not only was it aware of Ellis, it seemed to be communicating with him. Ellis gave a short bark in response and turned in a circle like an excitable Pomeranian, then his normally expressionless face fell as if wondering why his fellow zombie wouldn't play with him.

The Smoker was unmistakably looking at Ellis, watching him. Then it gave one last hack and wheeze before its misshapen head fell back and it was, finally, dead.

Silence filled the dark little room. The three survivors watched with unease as Ellis stared at the Smoker's lifeless corpse. Then, without warning, Ellis turned and prowled into the corner, nestling himself in between the wall and a filing cabinet.

"Ellis..." Rochelle started forward, her hand outstretched, but he rebuked her by growling and pushing himself closer to the wall. Confused and afraid, Rochelle backed off, "What's the matter with him?"

"Dunno, but we best stay away for now," Coach said, putting his hand to Rochelle's back and leading her away.

Nick glanced back at Ellis, sullen and silent in his corner, and followed the others out.

For a long time that night, Ellis stayed away. As Nick set up his palette of blankets behind the counter of the lobby, he had expected to hear the telltale scuffling noises of Ellis padding along toward him. But the boy seemed content to stay sulking in the back room, and so Nick curled up amongst his blankets and fell asleep, the promised safety of Coach, Rochelle, and several firearms nearby.

* * *

Dawn was shimmering on the horizon when Nick awoke to the boy laying beside him, his ever-erratic breath coming out in uneven huffs, as it had done since he'd become Infected. Caught up in a tangle of blankets, Nick struggled and finally turned to face him, laying a gentle hand on Ellis' cool, muscular arm.

Nick knew the boy was upset, though you didn't have to be particularly good at reading people to tell. Ellis had never been good at hiding his feelings, and it seemed that not even becoming a zombie could fix that.

Nick knew it must have had something to do with the Smoker's death. The moment the tall Infected had died, Ellis had sunken into this morose and antisocial state. He wondered if Ellis had finally realized what he himself was, or maybe he knew that it had been Nick that had fired upon his "new friend". Nick didn't know, and it tore him to piece not to be able to wheedle the information out of Ellis and make it all right again.

But it hadn't ever been right in the first place, had it? Not since corrupt CEDA scientists plunged that needle into Ellis' arm. Ellis, who in that situation, had basically been a kidnapped boy, and just as innocent.

"Ellis...look at me," Nick prodded the mechanic in the ribs. Ellis yelped softly and jumped, swiveling around to growl at Nick, who simply smirked, "Sorry, killer, you don't scare me anymore."

He hooked an arm around Ellis' waist, held him close.

"Tell me what's wrong," he murmured, the palm of his hand cupped against the dome of Ellis' hat. But Ellis didn't erupt into human speech, didn't laugh or shrug or grin, didn't even growl in place of the English words he'd been so fond of butchering with his accent before becoming infected. He simply closed his eyes and gave a deep, guttural sound, half sigh, half growl.

There were many nights where Nick dreamed that Ellis was becoming human again, that he could be taught to walk and speak and function like a normal human being.

But they were always just dreams.

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**Thanks for reading and sticking with me, you guys!**


	8. Chapter 8

**So I urge you all to check out the reviews for this fic, because I recently got a very amusing one. I'm a bit confused as to why this person would continue to read this since they seem to hate slash so much, and I have explicitly stated that this is a GAY fic where two men are GAY and do GAY things together.**

**Next thing. I love Ellis, he is an amazing character. Yes, I write him as homosexual for the purposes of this story (because I am a self-confessed slash fangirl), but you can't deny the boy says some pretty gay shit in the game anyway. "I'd bear that man's children" comes to mind, for one.**

**But I can forgive this person for their "review". Because by their own admittance on another one of my fics, they are young. And young people are mostly careless and narrow-minded and have nothing better to do than troll the intarwebs.**

**And many thank-yous to Effective Immediately, who provided a very well-written counter to the flame which uplifted my spirits a great deal. You rock!**

**So, in honor of this reviewer, I will be including an especially gay scene in this chapter. Fangirls and fanboys of the world, rejoice!**

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"Buckle up, y'all, we're back on the road again!" Coach shut the door behind him, settling into the driver's seat with unexpected joviality.

"I swear to God, Coach, if you start singing fucking Willie Nelson..." Nick said sourly after taking his place in the back. Beside him, Ellis had already wedged himself onto the floorboards, studying the carpeting with bleary eyes.

"You wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit your white ass, Nick," Coach answered aloofly, resulting in a barely-contained snicker from Rochelle as she secured her seat belt. The Hummer rumbled to life with a turn of the keys.

"Goddamn Willie Nelson," Nick snapped, "that _ain't _good music, that's like if Ellis got shitfaced drunk in a room full of helium and decided to sing. _As a Hunter._"

Ellis lifted his head at his name, a piece of carpet fluff dangling from his lips. Nick sighed and reached down to remove it, paying no mind to Ellis' sharpened teeth and darkened disposition. Once the fuzz was removed, Ellis gave a mournful growl and buried his head between his arms. His cap, displaced, stuck up at an odd angle as its bill pressed against the floor.

"How's he doing back there?" Rochelle craned her neck to get a look. Nick was suddenly struck with the notion that one day, after all this shit, Rochelle would make a great mother.

"Crammed into the floorboards."

Rochelle gave Ellis a sad look, twisting in her seat so she could pat the back of his head.

"Poor thing...he's been grumpy all morning. Must still be upset about that Smoker."

"An amazin' thing," Coach shook his head and gave the steering wheel a turn, deftly avoiding a ruined car on the road, "it was like they was talkin' to each other. Communicatin'. I shoulda known, though, all those times I shoved back a Hunter just to be ambushed by a goddamn Smoker...there's a lot we don't know 'bout them things, I guess."

"And knowing is half the battle," Rochelle said with a grin on her face. Coach and Nick simply gave her odd glances, so she rolled her eyes and leaned against the door, her joke having fallen on generationally deaf ears.

"I wonder if he's not feeling well," Nick frowned down at Ellis, who hadn't moved from his position, "I mean, isn't that what all these zombies are, really? Sick people?"

"Ellis is strong, Nick," Coach answered, his eyes locked on the road before him, "he's been fightin' this thing from the very beginnin'. That's gotta take some energy, you can't expect him to be bouncing around all the time."

Nick grunted in response and they lapsed into silence that was only broken by Ellis' shuddering sigh.

* * *

_"Hey Nick. I ever tell you that I love you?"_

_"Only about twenty times a day."_

_"Well, I do."_

_"I gathered that," Nick gave Ellis a glance, mouth set in his usual frown._

_"You sure are an angry old guy," Ellis grinned, leaning his head against Nick's shoulder. The bill of Ellis' cap prodded Nick's neck, so he snatched it off and threw it in the corner._

_"I'm not old, sport," he answered, but put his arm securely around Ellis' sturdy waist._

_"Only old people call people 'sport', Nick," the boy closed his eyes and allowed a happy smile to play on his lips._

_They sat together on the little cot, alone in their dismally small tent. The winter was cold and the tent did little to shield them from it, but they had thick blankets and good jackets and each other. Ellis' hand found Nick's, and he threaded their fingers together, clutching the warm hand tightly._

_"You make me so happy I could jes' die, Nick," Ellis murmured with a nuzzle against the older man's neck. Nick gave a huff of a laugh._

_"Well, don't plan on dying yet. I still need you."_

_"Really?" Ellis' head snapped up in excitement._

_"Sure. If you died, I'd have to find someone else to screw."_

_Ellis' face fell a little, and Nick couldn't help but notice. And it made him sad, goddamn it, that he could blatantly hurt the kid's feelings like that. But he did. He did it a lot._

_Nick untangled their fingers and brought his hands to Ellis' face, cupping the smooth skin of his cheeks before he leaned in for a kiss._

_Ellis accepted the silent apology with gratitude. Muscular arms wound about Nick's neck, loving and possessive. Ellis gave a little moan into Nick's mouth, something he often did simply because he knew Nick liked it. Then they separated, though Ellis still clung to Nick and kept him warm with body heat and whispered admonitions of love._

_"You're a weird kid, Overalls," Nick muttered. His fingertips sought the warm flesh under Ellis's jacket and shirt, traced the ridges of his abdomen in a way that made the younger man shudder, "A redneck guy from Georgia who takes it up the ass from an older man, then says he loves him."_

_"I do love you," Ellis said, then smirked and raised a thin eyebrow, "you didn't never visit Savannah before the Infection, did ya?"_

_Nick allowed himself a small, and truthful, shake of the head._

_"Figures," Ellis continued, "Savannah ain't no stranger to gay men, Nick. I mean, we got art schools and shit."_

_He settled back against Nick as if that explained everything, and gave the gambler a lazy nip on the neck._

_"I still love you, y'know," his lips moved, soft and wet, against Nick's skin._

_A cocky smirk and a pinch on the ass was all Nick gave Ellis in return._

* * *

Nick woke suddenly and world flared into sharp relief, all color and noise and movement. A cacophony of screams peppered with gunshots made his eardrums throb, his head ache. At first all he could see was Rochelle, shooting rounds out the passenger-side window from her AK-47, her eyes wild and her teeth gritted. Then he realized, they were surrounded. Through the bloodied windshield, masses of thin, pallid faces snarled. Curled hands beat the glass in a rage, but to no avail; and suddenly, the lesser zombies were thrown aside by a massive fist of flayed skin.

The Tank raised its enormous arms and slammed them down on the hood of the Hummer, causing the thing to buckle and lurch upwards before crashing back down. Nick, dazed by an abrupt knock to the head, heard Ellis' Hunter shriek beside him.

Coach, his hands free of the now-useless steering wheel, hefted up a semi-automatic and shot straight through the glass, round after round, right into the roaring mouth of the Tank. It spat and gurgled blood before keeling forward, laying heavy and dead against the Hummer's front. Rochelle's gun fired a few more times, mowing down any remaining Infected in her vision while Ellis lunged for the dashboard, growling and snarling through the broken glass at the Tank.

"Ellis, it's dead!" Coach yelled, and the boy hunched and growled and dug his sharpened fingers into the dashboard so deeply they left marks.

"Oh, shit," Rochelle sighed and pressed her back hard against her seat, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths in an effort to calm herself.

"What the fuck..." Nick finally sputtered, "what the fuck just happened?"

But no one answered, they were too busy trying to catch their breath and compose themselves. Ellis, content with the Tank's stillness, retreated to the backseat, a low growl sounding deep within his throat.

After a moment or two, Coach spoke up.

"Damn horde. Just like what happened when we was bein' transported to that base, Nick. Then that goddamn Tank...they all came out from the woods," he gestured to the area outside the Hummer; a desolate one-lane road surrounded by old pines and oaks. He turned and narrowed his eyes at Nick, who was nursing his bumped head, "didn't I tell you to buckle up?"

"When you said that, I didn't think we were actually supposed to!" Nick snapped back.

"How old _are_ you, Nick?"

"Old enough to make my own decisions."

"Boys," Rochelle's eyes were still closed, browns drawn together as she spoke, "arguing won't get us anywhere. Coach...will the car work?"

"She's stopped dead, Rochelle," he answered mournfully, "and I reckon there's no way to fix her, not even if Ellis was still in his right state of mind."

Ellis snorted as if taking personal offense to the remark.

"So we're going to have to fucking walk," Nick said, "great. Just great. We never should have left that goddamn school. I can't believe we left."

After his muttering was complete, they were all silent and somber. Several minutes passed before Coach spoke again.

"We oughta salvage what we can carry and go on. We got the map now, we can make it."

"To where? What if there's nothing there, Coach?"

"Well, Nick, we just gotta try."

* * *

What supplies they could carry were quickly packed into duffel bags Rochelle had insisted upon bringing. They didn't speak much, and as they walked away from the metal ruins that had been their salvation, their silence deepened.

The incident seemed to have roused Ellis out of his gloom, however. He scampered a short way from the group and climbed a tall oak. As his human friends moved along the road, Ellis followed, leaping from branch to branch amidst yelps of joy and the upset screeching of the birds.

"Ellis seems happy," Rochelle offered in a quiet voice.

"If we could all be so lucky," Nick grumbled while readjusting the strap of the duffel bag over his shoulder. Between the bag over his shoulder and the rifle slung across his back, he had no room to move freely or quickly, something that he had found to be very necessary in survival.

"I hope he don't run off too far," Coach cast a wary eye at Ellis, who seemed to be chasing something through the foliage.

"I don't think we could get rid of him if we wanted to," Rochelle answered with a laugh.

"Yeah, that might be a problem later," the large man sighed, "but we ain't gon' talk about it now. Right now we just gotta keep on movin'."

More silence save for the creaking limbs of the trees.

"Shouldn't they be dead by now?" Rochelle's voice sounded sudden and clear amongst the stillness, "the Infected, I mean? It's been forever since the outbreak, shouldn't they have starved? Or been wiped out by the military?"

"Of course not. That'd just be too easy, wouldn't it?" Nick said, and the other two managed soft laughs.

"Well, Ro girl, it's like I said...we don't really know nothin' about these zombies, do we? That's why they was experimentin' on folks, why they got Ellis...they was tryin' to figure shit out."

Their conversation was interrupted as Ellis came crashing out of the woods, something small and furry dangling from his mouth. He gave a mighty jump and landed in front of Nick, dropping the dead and bloody squirrel at the gambler's feet. His teeth were red and bared in the semblance of a smile.

"Oh, how...cute," Rochelle stared in pity at the unfortunate little creature, "he brought you a present, Nick."

"Make sure you skin it before you cook it up," Coach advised with a grin.

"Ugh. I'm sure you _could_ tell me how to cook a squirrel, Coach. Um...thanks, Ellis."

He mentally noted that he wouldn't be kissing Ellis again, drunk or otherwise.

* * *

Night was upon them by the time they were out of the woods. Exhausted, they settled down in the first intact building they had come across; a small Dairy Queen on the outskirts of a little town.

"Don't get your hopes up, Coach, I don't think there's any ice cream left," Nick smirked as the older man pried the planks off the door.

Soon they were inside, secure in the darkness. They rested on the linoleum floor, their backs against the duffel bags.

"We haven't seen any lone zombies in a while," Rochelle said tiredly as she massaged her aching feet, "they're always in a horde."

"There was that Smoker," Nick pointed out. He lounged against the wall, Ellis curled up and sleeping with his back tight against Nick's thigh.

"That didn't count. The Special Infected are different, they...they think differently."

"You mean they _think_." Coach mumbled around a mouthful of Twinkie.

"I guess...yeah. I'm just confused, why does this shit keep happening to us? I been, we've been good people, right? Well, Nick is up for debate, but..."

"Hey," Nick lashed. But as Rochelle and Coach laughed, he enjoyed the merriment, the normality, of the sound. Beside him, Ellis' back pushed against his leg with each intake of the boy's breath.

"Well, I don't know about you boys, but I'm worn out," Rochelle unpacked a couple of thin blankets they had managed to salvage from the Hummer, and spread them out on the floor in way of a mattress.

The old instinct of staying together had risen again within them, stronger than ever now. Nick lay down on the torn old blanket, Ellis still resting at his side.

These people were his family. He didn't ask for it, hell, he didn't even want it. But he couldn't change it. And now he knew what Ellis was thinking when the boy had gleefully insisted that they'd all be living near each other one day, visiting each other for dinners and games and celebrations.

Not even Nick could lightly dismiss the fact that he'd trudged through hell and back, then through hell again, with these people.

He turned toward Ellis, his chest against the strong muscle of the boy's back, and wrapped an arm around him. A content sigh escaped Ellis' throat, so human that it made Nick forget he was close to a monster. The last thing Nick saw before sleep took him was the moonlight casting beams in through a sliver of window, shining on Ellis.

* * *

Snarls and incessant scrabbling permeated his dreams. It wasn't uncommon. He had heard strange things since the infection broke out, noises he didn't know were possible, and these sounds were recycled in his mind, over and over again. Especially in the nightmares he insisted he didn't have.

There was the sound of splintering wood, then a low, thrumming growl.

Nick groaned once he realized these sounds weren't just in his head, but firmly set in reality, and pushed the heavy body against him in an effort to get Ellis to shut up. But the boy only gave a soft snort. Nick's eyes cracked open. Ellis was still asleep.

And on the counter above Nick, a darkened silhouette crouched, and all he could see as it lunged for him were stained and jagged teeth.


	9. Chapter 9

**Yes! I'm still alive!**

**And I'll be at Anime Weekend Atlanta this week, dressed as a Witch! Feel free to approach and ask me why I'm such a pervert.**

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* * *

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Surprise deadened the pain of the Hunter's attack. But Nick could feel the searing and slashing of the thing's claws, its heavy weight upon him, smell its rancid breath in his face. Though it knocked him backwards with enough force to jolt the air out of him, Nick wasn't in the habit of staying quiet when a zombie had hold of him.

So he screamed.

He saw Coach and Rochelle jump to their feet nearby, but their movement was immediately eclipsed by Ellis, who woke with a screech and tackled the Hunter, sending them both tumbling off Nick.

Nick scrabbled to his feet and lurched away from the mass of ripping nails and gnashing teeth that was Ellis and the stray Hunter, the familiar sting of pain now evident in his chest.

"Ellis!" Coach bellowed, gun aimed and hesitant, "goddamn it, move!"

The air churned with flying claws and angry shrieks. Blood rose in beautiful, violent arcs and splattered the wall, black against the night. The two were entangled in a vicious mass, and in the darkness, it was impossible for Coach to aim correctly.

Nick cursed, snatched up a revolver from its place on the counter, and darted back into the fray. The Hunter was on top of Ellis, its arms blurred from the movement. Nick grabbed the rogue Hunter by the back of its tattered hoodie and jerked it backwards. Before it even had time to scream, he set the barrel against its head and pulled the trigger.

The monster didn't make a noise as it died, letting the gunshot scream for it. Nick let the limp body drop and leaned heavily against the wall, his free arm wrapped around his now-aching torso. Ellis lay still underneath the heavy weight of the dead thing, his face peppered with its blood and brains and his eyes wide.

"Get up, boy," Coach mumbled and kicked the dead Hunter off of Ellis after recovering from his own shock, "c'mon, get on up."

"Nick," Rochelle scrambled for a flashlight. He squinted from its light as she turned it toward him, his eyes burning, "Nick, are you okay?"

"Oh yeah. I'm fine. I just got torn apart by a goddamn Hunter. How the hell did that thing get in here?"

"Good question," Rochelle said softly, and swept the flashlight across the expanse of the room. One of the windows was missing a couple of boards, which lay splintered on the floor below. The perfect size for a svelte and hungry Hunter to crawl through.

"Jesus," Nick growled to himself and sat down heavily.

Ellis sat, shakily, and crawled toward Nick, a dark smear of blood behind him. Together they sat, side by side, wounded.

"Coach," Rochelle said, "shine the flashlight on them. I'm gonna patch them up the best I can, then in the morning we can get a better look."

He did as he was told, and she set to applying antiseptic and bandages. Ellis hissed at her touch, but a sharp reprimand left him still and moody. Nick grumbled the whole time, but she bore his attitude with practiced patience.

"All right, boys. That should do you for now. Go to sleep...I'll keep an eye out for any more of 'em."

She stood with a tiny groan and made her way to the other side of the counter, gun tight in her hands.

S_entry duty,_ Nick thought. _I thought we were done with that shit. Done with it. We were done with it in that goddamn camp. Soldiers could sentry and we could rest. Soldiers, they're the ones that actually sign up for this shit._

Nick looked to the side and saw Ellis staring at him. It was a little unnerving. Ellis eyes were wide and fevered from infection, and they glinted in the meager light like bone china. Nick wondered what he saw through those infected eyes, what Nick and Coach and Rochelle must look like to him. What the world looked like to him. Was it full of color, or gray tones, or was it all just a wash of angry red?

Nick lay back down, wincing, and motioned for Ellis to do the same. He did, slowly, and nuzzled close to Nick, his face pressed against Nick's bared chest. He growled, a deep grumble that trilled against Nick's skin. And then he was silent.

* * *

The morning light showed them what they were dealing with, as far as their wounds went. Not too bad, really. They'd certainly had worse. But it was never a welcome feeling, the gauze sticking to the exposed flesh, the stinging of every movement. The aches even as the wounds healed.

Ellis seemed to have stayed awake all night, despite Rochelle's sentry duty. His eyelids drooped and, as they sat on the floor eating a breakfast of cold tomato soup, he rested with his head against Nick's leg, a string of saliva hanging from his open mouth.

Rochelle had dark purple bags under her eyes, but otherwise seemed awake and eager to move. She packed their things with efficiency and shouldered open the door as they moved to head out.

There were no happy growls from Ellis as they moved through this town, no scampering up trees, no squirrel-catching. He prowled silently behind them, and Nick began to make it a habit to look over his shoulder to see how the boy was faring.

Ellis seemed tired. Ellis seemed worn down and scared and upset, but how could Nick really know? Once upon a time, Ellis had let them all know what he was feeling at any given moment. Now they'd never know again, not for sure.

He didn't look like himself. This could have been a different person entirely from the kid he'd met on that hotel roof. His cheekbones were visible under too-bright eyes, gleaming sickly behind a heavy fringe of uncut bangs. He needed another haircut, and a good shave to boot. His ribs showed through the bloody gashes of in his shirt, skin pale and bruised and running with black and blue veins. He was thin and unclean and Nick knew he'd be shot the minute a soldier set eyes on him.

"Ellis," he called back, beckoning with a hand. The boy cast tired eyes his way, "Ellis, c'mere."

Slowly, uncertainly, he sped up until he was crawling alongside Nick. He stumbled and bumped Nick's leg, and Nick just set a hand into Ellis' dirty hair and it seemed to make them both a little happier.

Ellis' condition, his silence, reminded Nick of an incident that had happened, long ago. A few days after they had first met.

They'd been inspecting a run-down old storehouse when Ellis had broken down a door and found himself staring right into the gaunt face of a Witch. Nick could remember it perfectly, Ellis poised above the broken boards, eyes wide and scared, and the Witch, her own orange eyes blazing. She screamed, and lunged, and Ellis was on his back in a flat second.

And the rest of them, Nick, Rochelle and Coach, had hesitated. Had almost watched this boy they didn't know being torn to death.

Maybe it had been because none of them knew each other too well. Maybe they were all just scared; Nick knew Rochelle was, her knees shook for hours afterwards. But they stood, and stared, and no one moved for precious long seconds.

Coach was the one who finally took up his ax in trembling hands and sliced the Witch's head clean off. It had flown in an arc and landed on a table with a sickly 'whump'. Ellis lay on the straw-covered floor, stark white and covered in blood and the tattered shreds of what had been a shirt. They had patched him up the best they could, and rested for a scant night, but they had to keep moving. They had to keep moving, and so they did.

Ellis hadn't spoken much down that stretch of road, Nick remembered. They were all sure he was going to die, sure that he wouldn't last another day. And even then, it had terrified them.

It was the most quiet Nick had had since he met the boy, and for some reason, he couldn't stand it.

"Where are we, redneck?"

"Hm?" Ellis looked at him, thumbing the bill of his cap. His face had been white but for a heavy brush of stubble and a magnificent slash across the bridge of his nose. The skin there was open, red and black. The bandages around his torso weren't holding well, and the bloody gauze draped like entrails over his coveralls.

"Where are we?" Nick repeated.

"Well, shit, Nick," Ellis sighed, using that favorite phrase of his. He looked wearily from one broken sign to the next, to the cornfields around them, to the burnt houses and dried-up ponds, "I reckon we're 'bout to step into Claxton. Ain't too far away from Vidalia."

"Vidalia?" Rochelle asked. Her voice, to Nick's tired ears, had seemed far away, "like the onions?"

"Yeah," Ellis nodded, but the motion seemed to make him sick; he grimaced and went tight-lipped for several long seconds before continuing on, "that's where them onions come from. Vidalia ain't nothin' but a little ole town, but I reckon it makes a killin' on them onions. Or used to, least."

They settled back into silence and the evening wore on, hot and humid. The road stretched between a grove of trees, their long branches dappling Appaloosa shadows on the asphalt. They all walked alone, unconsciously keeping their distance; at least until Ellis stumbled to the side and bumped Nick's shoulder.

"Personal space, hick," Nick grumbled.

"Sorry, Nick," there had been a tired smile on Ellis' young face.

"Just don't get too close" Nick said sourly, "why are you always hanging around me, anyway? Are you gay for me or something?"

Ellis laughed, and it sounded more like a wheeze. He gripped his side, where the bandages were loose.

"Shit, Nick, maybe I am. Maybe I am gay fer ya. Lord a'mighty."

"Oh yeah?" Nick asked, interest piqued, but not too terribly much. They were tired and hurt and probably slowly going insane. It felt like it. It felt like the sun above was a milky yellow zombie eye, watching and watching and swallowing them up and killing them slowly with the heat and infection. "So you wanna pound my ass, huh?"

"Aw, Nick," Ellis said through an honest laugh, "I'd be jus' find with you poundin' mine, if you wanted."

And, if Nick recalled correctly, he had felt the slightest twinge of pressure in his groin when Ellis had spoken those words.

Later, long after Vidalia, Ellis' wounds had healed. And even later after that, Nick had pounded Ellis' ass, with the boy groaning his name in that Southern drawl like some redneck mantra.

It seemed so very long ago.

* * *

They walked a long time. For hours, for days. Without Ellis' constant zombie-chatter, they were left in an uneasy silence. It made them focus too much on their thoughts, and sometimes Nick went so far into himself that he struggled to find his way back out.

Some days were harder and some easier. Some days they'd trek, hot and hungry, down endless expanses of asphalt, tired eyes downcast and bleary. Even Ellis' stamina couldn't hold out forever; he could only go so long before he dropped onto his stomach in the middle of the street, curling up defensively and refusing to move until he had rested. His wounds were stubborn and were healing far too slowly, and he snapped at their cautious touches.

Things like that reminded them all that Ellis wasn't a tireless animal. He was sick, infected with the worst plague humanity had ever seen.

So when he insisted on resting, they'd hunker down around him, sit on their bags and rest too. Except for one evening, when Ellis had decided to rest right in the middle of an ant bed; the sudden stings sent him howling up a tree, where he remained for hours on end, despite their switching between gentle coaxing and irate threats to cut the tree down.

They decided to take an exit into a small residential area; Nick, in all honesty, didn't know what to call it, really. It was mostly marsh and woods and creeks, with only a few trailers scattered here and there along a tree-sheltered road. The day was windy and cool, the trees swayed and the long grasses rustled. They took to walking along the bank of a lake, its rippling waters dark and unaware of the strife surrounding it.

"Jesus Christ," Nick moaned, "I am starving."

"I hear ya, Nick," Coach grumbled in response, "I'm so hungry, even that God-awful food CEDA made us eat would be welcome right about now."

"I wouldn't go that far," the gambler answered and Rochelle snorted in laughter. Nick looked back to see Ellis straying behind, nipping at a bunch of tall grasses growing at the side of the pond, "Overalls! Don't eat those, they could be poisonous!"

But Ellis just lifted his head and continued chewing, slowly, while looking at Nick, as if trying to provoke him.

"Goddamn it, El-" Nick began to storm up to Ellis but the boy dropped the weeds and darted away, too quick for Nick's tired body. With a roll of the eyes, Nick dropped to his knees to inspect the grass, to make sure it wasn't something poisonous. Not that he'd know, he admitted, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Something to show he still cared, that he had a little control over the boy's fate. Which, he admitted, was looking bleaker by the second.

"Bitter-root," Rochelle's voice came from above him. He looked up, from where she stood beneath the sunlight, "that's what that is. Remember? That time we were all so hungry and Ellis found it and said we could chew on it."

"Right...I called him a grass-eating redneck," Nick answered.

"And then you fainted from lack of food," she said. It could be been a joke, but something told Nick that it wasn't. She walked off and left him kneeling in the grass, with the memory of Ellis' voice echoing through his head.

_"You gon' be okay, Nick? I told you, you can chew on this grass if you want...it helps, I promise, it really does."_

He clenched the long red stems in his fists and hung his head, because there was no way he could help Ellis like Ellis had tried to help him.

* * *

Their residence for the night was a library, a two-story building decorated with washed-out, blood-splattered murals and raised pedastals flanking the stairs. Lions carved out of granite sat on the pedastals, broken and useless. Nick made what he thought to be a brilliant remark about how useless a library would be in this little backwater town, but instead of laughs he just got heavy sighs and tired eye rolls.

"Well, I thought it was funny," he grumbled to himself as he made his way up the concrete stairs. As Coach finished prying the boards off the door, Ellis hopped up on one of the pedestals, gave a weary sigh, and sank to his belly beneath the lion's great stone gaze.

"Ellis, sweetie, get up," Rochelle coaxed, "We're going in here now."

The boy closed his eyes tightly, in what seemed to be a child's attempt at pretending to sleep. But it occurred to Nick that maybe it was more than just that. It could have been genuine pain. Ellis wasn't doing well.

"You guys go on ahead," Nick said, and he sat on the lowest step, his back leaning against the pedestal, "I'll stay out here until Ellis wants to go in. I have my gun," he lifted his firearm in demonstration. Rochelle didn't seem to be too happy with the situation.

"Nick-" she began, but Coach quickly interrupted her.

"Now baby girl, it makes sense. You and me, we can search the library, make sure there ain't no zombies. Nick and the boy can keep watch out here. We'll all hear each other if one of us yells."

"Okay...but I don't like it," she muttered and, shouldering her weapon, stepped through the door with Coach.

The stillness was a welcome change. Nick felt like he'd been walking forever, down a single road that had no end. But there'd have to be an end eventually, even if it was death. And, he thought with a painful tug on his heart, death would probably reach Ellis before it reached him.

"And we have to walk down this stupid road while making half-assed conversation. That's the worst part," he sighed, to no one in particular, "at least _your _conversations were full-assed. One-sided, but full-assed."

There was a moment of stillnes before Nick felt a light pressure on the top of his head, and glanced up. Ellis lay with his chin over the edge of the pedestal, his arm draped over the side, hand resting gently on Nick's head. He gazed at Nick with an expression that was unreadable; either from lack of emotion or from too much emotion entirely. Then the boy closed his eyes and sighed again, his hand gently brushing back Nick's hair. Nick felt the light scrape of the claws against his scalp, that controlled and gentle touch, and shut his eyes as well.

He leaned back, alone with Ellis and his own restless thoughts underneath the oranges and yellows of the dying sky.


End file.
